atw: Re: Styles in resumes and CVs - was - Agencies and resumes
- From: "bja" <moo-man@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 15 Aug 2010 11:50:32 +1000
You can argue what you like James, but I for one ask agencies to send me the
author's original résumé and on receipt, ALWAYS go into its formatting and
structure to see how it was created. If the applicant then gets an
interview, I ask them about the résumé construction to ensure it was their
own work.
A bad résumé (particularly one using mainly 'Normal + Override') will get
you to the bottom of my list and the ONLY way you will ever get an interview
with me is if everyone else has bad résumés as well (which has never
happened).
I shook my head when I read "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" [sic] because it shows you simply don't understand your
own argument.
The way you create your résumé IS part of the advertising if you are looking
for work as a technical writer.
To me, your ability to create even a simple, short document using
professional technical writing techniques is critical. If you can't even do
that in a five page résumé (or less for those newer to the trade), then why
should I trust you with something more important.
As for the "Normal" style, to some of us, that's like a red rag to a bull.
We have spent a good part of our lives trying to get away from 'Normal +
Override' so why would we want to further infect our own workplaces when we
don't have to. The less we have to train someone (or retrain them), the
better.
You can submit a poor résumé if you like, you could also go to an interview
wearing shorts and thongs, or you could be late for your interview, or a
dozen other things that will put you to the back of the pack, all else being
equal, but why would you James?
To me, that's just shooting yourself in the foot when you don't have to. I
know that many 'technical writers' have skill-sets that don't include the
ability to create a proper template using styles, but that's a different
argument for a different thread I guess. :)
And BTW, I'm no saint and have had a number of issues with my own résumés
over the years, but I constantly try to improve and I ALWAYS use styles and
formatting?and I recommend all technical writers do the same.
As for urban myths, or bloated templates with a ridiculously large number of
styles and pages, I again just shake my head in dismay.
Cheers,
Bruce
P.S. I only contract these days so fortunately I don't have to go through
résumés anymore. :)
-----Original Message-----
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James Hunt
Sent: Friday, 13 August 2010 4:06 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Styles in resumes and CVs - was - Agencies and resumes
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? -
and are infrequently revised - how many times a year do you update your
stuff? These are exactly the sort of documents for which Word is a good
tool, and it is quite efficient to format such a document by using
variations of the Normal style. Applying this practice to a book-length
document will rightly bring charges of fingerpainting, but fingerpainting
does have its place in the production of short, attractive documents that
will rarely be revised.
Even if a Word-based cover letter or resume is style-based, it is simply not
possible to draw any conclusions about the ability of a writer to devise
styles for longer and more complex documents. I will give an illustration.
The Word versions of my own cover letter and resume contain only thirteen
user-defined paragraph styles between them. The Word template for books that
I have used and adapted on contract after contract for years contains over
two hundred styles, covering many different circumstances, and a great deal
of other material as well (title pages, front matter outlines, part pages,
chapters, lettered appendices, outlines of custom ListNum and SEQ numbering
sequences, useful VBA bits and bobs, ...): the template is about 100 pages
long. It is a big step from thirteen styles to three hundred styles, and
none of the extras in the template appear in my resume.
I have heard these assertions from a number of sources, over several years,
and I have concluded that technical writing has its urban legends, just like
other fields, and that these urban legends are as long-lasting as anyone
else's urban legends. It is possible to speculate about how these ideas took
hold, and my own hypothesis is that they were invented as short-listing
procedures. Now short-listing is hardly scientific, but folklore like this
is not much help to anyone. I suspect that a random-number generator might
be as good.
James Hunt
----------------
"... there was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority
afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past ..."
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
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