I’ve been doing a lot of self-reflection the past few months and re-evaluating my career situation. So, when it comes to career talk, everyone talks about the elusive resume.
To be frank, the resume doesn’t tell us the entire story. Imagine summarizing your entire life on one-sheet of paper. NOT POSSIBLE!
But, resumes are sometimes the golden ticket to landing a lucrative position, so how can we get our resume telling the story we want others to hear?
We must be selective when putting together our resume and sometimes we will submit different ones for different positions. It’s not like we’re filling in fake information, but we’re being selective by highlighting information that pertains to the job we’re applying for.
This is exactly why our resume doesn’t tell our whole story, and the one thing it usually does a poor job on is giving the company a sense of our character.
It’s hard to demonstrate your character by looking at your job history. One would think if someone switched jobs frequently, then they must not be responsible. However, that could be far from the case. Many factors like life events or better opportunities could have been the reason for frequent job switches. Also, there isn’t much room on resumes to list hobbies, which showcase one’s character better than job history.
My advice to people going through job search is to find ways to sneak in a bit of your character into your resume. This might be keywords or positions that relate to something unique about you. Although you should not fill your resume with unnecessary jargon, it’s also important to make your resume stand out. Leaving some room to mention that you’re the community volunteer leader might be better than listing positions from over 5 years back.
To HR who are hiring staff, remember to give these applicants the benefit of the doubt and try searching for the hidden story behind the words in the applicant’s resume. Who knows, there might be a gem in that pile.