The New Resume – A New Tool for the New World of Work
The traditional resume, though required for virtually any position, is not a marketing tool. It is a tool required by prospective employers to disqualify job applicants and limit the number of individuals who reach the interview stage.
Both the job advertisement and the individual resume are, at best, exaggerations of the truth. The company’s help wanted ad is a projection of what the people at the firm believe will be the proper attributes and qualifications of the best candidate. It is, to be blunt, a shopping list. While the resume is a glamorization of an individual’s qualifications to secure the position, and is loaded with jargon and bafflegab.
Anyone who has either written a resume or responded to an employment opportunity advertisement will notice, if they are objective, that the ads have nothing to do with talent. Talents– strengths – are irrelevant. Most of the ads declare the need for certain skills, knowledge, and years of experience. They itemize the qualities that they can change in a person, at the same time they ignore the ones they can’t change.
The new resume is both a document of accomplishments and a projection of your value to prospective employers. Different from the old resume, the new resume looks primarily at the talents and skills you have developed over your long (or short) work (paid or volunteer) career. It stresses your strengths as they contribute to your value and it focuses on the needs of the prospective employers, their wants and their needs. Once you know your strengths and how they have contributed to your history of successes, you are in a perfect position to take control of the job search strategy. You, through your research, have identified the dominant talents you need to succeed in the role for which you are applying. Once you have positioned yourself for the role, you are set to craft your own employment advertisement – your personal marketing tool(s) – to fill the role.
The new resume is a pivotal ingredient in the 24 Hour Job Search method. It enables you to get interviews with decision makers and circumvent gatekeepers. It is part of a new job search strategy that is working for countless individuals who’ve spent fruitless months working the traditional method. It does not replace the traditional method. It supplements it.
