Cookie-Cutter Resumes May Not Be Your Best Bet
"Scrap your resume! Scrap the obsession with building a gigantic paper structure that only documents where you've been and what you've done. It's not enough."
For job seekers who cling to resumes, this is revolutionary advice. It comes from John Popoli, vice president of Lake Forest Graduate School of Management in Illinois.
"What also is needed is to create a portfolio of skills that clearly indicates what you're able to do, how you've built on your skills and how you've taken them to the next level with results," said Popoli. He calls his approach "scaffolding your skills."
That means you should note with each job you've held the skills you learned and applied, such as technical, interpersonal, leadership and teamwork skills.
"Employers are deluged with hyperbole and puffery, but they're looking for results, results, results," said Popoli. "Using the resume to give a travelogue that chronicles, for instance, that you worked in three different states for three different employers doesn't give even a hint of what results you can achieve for them."
Robert Tindall, director of human resources for California-based GeoTrain, a certified training partner for Cisco Systems, said he spends "a lot of time screening job applicants. And if we just see the traditional resume, we don't have any hard examples of the work the applicant actually has done. Outcomes also are needed."
However, listing skills and successes with each position you've held may not be for everyone, cautioned William Potter, vice president of Harvard Oaks Enterprises, a resume-writing service in Chicago.
"That's good advice - but only for 1 percent of the population: those in high-ranking positions and those who are in high demand," said Potter, previously an executive recruiter.
It's appropriate for chief executive officers, chief financial officers, directors of research and technical professionals, Potter said, because "at that level there are fewer competitors for the job, so people reading their resumes have more time to do so. In that circumstance, it's logical that you can elaborate further."
Otherwise, Potter, who works on thousands of resumes each year, endorses brevity - resumes of one or two pages.
"Resumes don't get jobs. Interviews get jobs. But resumes can get interviews," Potter said.
E-mail questions to Carol Kleiman at: ckleiman@tribune.com Copyright 1999, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.