Below are the typical areas of a resume and my priceless secrets for
dealing
with them. These tips will help crush the competition, get you
in the door
and put you behind a desk making 50 big ones, plus bonus.
THE NAME: Use the name to your advantage. Spice it up a
little bit. Steve
Smith goes nowhere fast. But Sir Stephen Smith -- now that might
turn a few
heads. Nicknames also help. Mark "Keyboards" O'Malley is
good. Mark
"Kegsucker" O'Malley is bad.
THE ADDRESS: Forget your real address. Make a statement
instead! Saying
you're from the Bronx suggests you're tough as nails. Anyplace
in Japan
implies you believe in an 18-hour-a-day work ethic!
THE PHONE NUMBER: Skip it. What are the odds they'll call
-- 1,000 to 1. If
they do, they'll probably just catch your roommate somewhere in the
middle of
his second six-pack. My advice is never put your phone number
on a resume
unless you want to try some interesting 900 number which might wake
up a
recruiter or two.
THE AMBITION STATEMENT: Forget the ambition statement. You
know what I
mean:"Seeking a challenging IS position using state-of-the-art technology
in a
high-growth, future-oriented corporation that is doing neat things
for the
environment." A better idea is to tell them what you're NOT seeking.
"Not
seeking a job where I'm paying my dues for eight years, maintaining
ancient
Cobol code that crashes every other night, slaving for some horrible
boss and
groveling in the smallest cubicle in the world until I finally claw
my way
into a lower management position, only to have the company lay off
40% of its
work force so that I wind up in some non-critical, low-paying, dead-end,
back-
office position."
EDUCATION: Don't be afraid of Yalies and PH.D.s. Be proud
of where you go to
school and play it straight. But just to be on the safe side,
send an
application to some prestigious high-tech program at a prestigious
school.
Until they respond, you're not lying if you list under your education
credits:
"BA in Watersports Administration, Massatucky State, 1993 ... and current
doctoral candidate, Nuclear Computer Simulation Modeling Fellowship
Program,
MIT."
EXPERIENCE: Even fresh out of school, you've got to have experience.
But
don't mention that you've invested in your own relational database
or coded an
object-oriented commodity trading system.... Everybody's done that
stuff. I'm
talking about hands-on experience: high-level management, microchip
design,
hostile takeovers, etc. So if you're a little light in the experience
area,
don't tell lies. Instead, simply try a bit-more-concise explanation
of the
experience you do have. For example, if you worked as a cashier
at Food
Giant, make it, "Monitored and troubleshot retail point-of-sale bar-code
inventory scanning system." "Conducted usability testing for
graphical user
interface" sounds a lot better than "played too much Nintendo."
But don't try
"Evaluated remote-accessed continuous-availability multimedia environment."
Most employers can pick that one off as watching too much MTV.
THE CLOSE: "References furnished upon request?" What kind
of power-close is
that? Let me leave you instead with this recommendation:
Close with impact.
Close with passion. Close with a line they'll remember, like
"Please, please
give me a job. And by the way, I know where you live."