Résumé fire

As someone who has read way too many badly-written resumes and cover letters, the best advice I can give to anyone on the subject is read this. Truth.

It starts with:

A résumé is a way to get to the next stage: the interview. Companies often get dozens of résumés for every opening … we get between 100 and 200 per opening. There is no possible way we can interview that many people. The only hope is if we can screen people out using résumés. Don’t think of a résumé as a way to get a job: think of it as a way to give some hiring manager an excuse to hit DELETE. At least technically, your résumé has to be perfect to survive.

Indeed. I never hired someone just because they had perfect spelling and punctuation in their cover letter, and had a well-organized and aestheticaly pleasing résumé attached. But I have certainly tossed out applications with spelling and grammar errors in the cover letter and poorly-organized and ugly résumés. If you can’t get communicate clearly and well when you have all the time in the world to write up something, how will you possibly do it in the middle of an overtime crisis?

Read the whole thing.

(via BoingBoing)