I have been a third party recruiting doing staffing for the Plastics Industry for the last 12 years. I receive about 100 resumes each day and after all this time I am still amazed by how poorly written so many of these resumes are. I am not talking about the obvious mistakes such as misspellings (is it possible that there are still people in the US that have not heard of spell checkers?) but about structural problems such as listing job duties instead of accomplishments and not giving any indication about the product(s) their employer manufacturers.
Since my past posts on resume writing appear to have gone unheeded, I am appealing to a higher power, GOD, to help resume writers. God’s resume can be found in the first two chapters of Genesis in the Bible.
The first thing worth noting is that GOD used a chronological format for his resume. He carefully lists each of his six jobs or tasks and states that each one of them took a day. Theologians can argue how long each day really was but the important thing to note is the basic format GOD used. He did not start the first chapter of Genesis with a list of key words. The keywords are contained within the text.
The second thing to note is that GOD told us his accomplishments intead of presenting us with his job description. I don’t know that a job description for being GOD would have been very informative, just as a candidate providing his or her job description is not very informative for the recruiter reading the resume.
The third thing worth noting is that GOD went to a great deal of effort to describe his products, e.g. “In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth.” He went on to describe the animals, humans, etc. that he created. Companies today want to hire individuals that understand their products and clients. Long gone are the days that individual were hired based on their potential with the belief that they could learn everything they needed to know to make them successful. Companies just don’t have the time to train like the use to. Companies want to know that you can hit the ground running so showing that you are familiar with the products and customers that the company makes and serves in paramount. So many candidates think that recruiters should be familiar with all the companies in the United States (the World?) that they do not have to provide any information about the company(s) where they have worked. This is a big mistake because third party and corporate recruiters do not know or have the time to research every company on a resume. If information about the candidates past companies is not on the resume the recruiter must assume the candidate does not have the requisite experience and pass over the candidate.
Also worth noting is that GOD provides the method(s) he used to create his products in Genesis, chapter 1 verse 9, “GOD spoke”. Obviously, we cannot create planets by speaking but we can motivate people or lead product launches by speaking. More importantly we can improve the products our company manufactures by using methods, such as, Lean Manufacturing, 5S, Six Sigma, etc. methodologies to get the job done so make sure they are included in the resume.
I know that I am a lowly third party recruiter so taking advice from me might be difficult but hopefully looking at a resume written by God will help with resume writing process.