atw: Re: Styles in resumes and CVs - was - Agencies and resumes
- From: Peter G Martin <peterm_5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:11:23 +1000
On 13/08/2010 4:06 PM, James Hunt wrote:
In a previous thread, contributors made two assertions that remained
unchallenged: namely, that presenting a resume or cover letter formatted
entirely in Normal style is Really Bad Form at least, and that insight into a
writer's skills can be gained from an examination of the user-defined styles in
a resume presented in Word format.
I will argue that both of these assertions are false.
Cover letters and resumes are short documents whose sole purpose, from a
writer's point of view, is to gain an interview with a potential client or
employer. That is, cover letters and resumes are essentially advertising
pieces, directed at the person compiling the short list for interviews.
Cover letters and resumes can be constructed with any tool that the writer
considers appropriate for this attention-getting exercise. These documents are
usually quite short - are there any resumes longer than three pages? -
Er. 3 pages?
That would be: Title page, Table of Contents and One page of work
history ? Wow !
Oh. No title page? No TOC? [No index, because that would be showing off?]
And are you suggesting that I should only include most recent work history?
Or if I've handled 30+ jobs in my work history, do I keep each to a
2-line summary, and skip over the separate heading for the name of the
company and date ? I might have to revise that a lot if some job
requirements come up which are relevant to skills I didn't include in
the 2-line summary.... which would seem to be very likely.
A short while ago, I had it suggested to me that "no résumé should be
longer than 3 pages", but then, I'm not sure how many jobs the person
who last suggested that to me had actually ever applied for. Or been
picked for.
And I do find a very significant variation in reactions to a CV longer
than 3 pages.
Rather, I favour the idea that every CV should have a form of "executive
summary" for those who want the overview, and a reasonably complete work
history for those who want the details.
and are infrequently revised - how many times a year do you update your stuff?
I try to update before and after every job in the work history. And
then I also try to revise quite frequently with different job
applications, given there may be different job requirements, and that
I've sometimes left out some details of work types I've undertaken.
[See above.] I'm not always successful in that revision, I admit.
BTW, I do recall that quite some time ago I really managed to bugger up
the appearance of a CV in Word format by making a last-minute and
hurried change to a paragraph style that (to my chagrin) I later
realised was in Normal.
Ugly. Didn't get the job. As I recall, I think it all went All Italic
or somesuch. Not to be recommended.
-Peter M
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