300 resumes. Thats how many applicants we got on a job posting that was plastered with DO NOT APPLY IF YOURE NOT QUALIFIED OR WE WILL KILL A KITTEN.
While no actual kittens were harmed in our interview process. We ended up doing phone interviews with 5. Were barely over 1%. The thing that the 99% shared in common? THE SAME BORING ASS RESUME. If you think its boring writing one of those. Imagine reading one.
Conventional wisdom has agreed that a resume should be one page. But conventional wisdom is just that
conventional. You know what else is conventional? Toaster ovens.
Who the hell wants to be conventional? Who ever said, when I grow up I wanna be conventional. GROSS. The thought makes me depressed. People should not want to be conventional; they should strive to be unique, inspiring, amazing, original or, at a minimum, incredibly weird.
Its like a blog post, you should stop when youre done. Dont force it to be one page, because more than likely the person reading it has seen more than one resume and can tell when you used bigger fonts to compensate. Like-wise, dont cram everything onto one sheet with the hope that youll impress your future boss, it just makes you look like youre trying too hard.
STAY SEXY
When I get a resume thats done in MS Word, I break out in hives. If you dont care enough about design to brand yourself, then youre probably not a good fit for us. While Im a huge diva when it comes to design, this also applies across the board. I cant imagine a situation where a recruiter gets a well-designed resume and doesnt give pause to think, This person really has their shit together.
Unless youre a designer, you probably arent awesome at design. Just like Im not a surgeon, so I dont perform surgeries on myself. A designers world revolves around making things look more visually appealing. They can make your resume look appealing so people will want to read it. This simple concept is often lost on people.
What does a good resume look like? Well, check these out, find a designer friend who will hook you up, and tell him which one you like the best.
http://smashfreakz.com/2012/08/creative-resume-template/
Show some personality.
I know resumes suck to do, but think of the experience of reading through hundreds of these things. Every single one bloated with business jargon that only proves you spent too long in corporate.
The one percent who received call backs had another thing in common: they made me laugh.