Boring, Bland Resumes: 3 Simple Ways To Stand Out
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Resumes are one of the worst inventions ever.
Not only do you have to look up what special keyboard keys are needed if you want to type the word resumé correctly (stupid accented é!) but there is also that tiny little detail of boiling down who you are as a professional and a person into one or two pages of formatted text.
Ugh.
Could we have come up with a worse system to try and fill a job?
Even online dating profiles are (just barely) better than this. At least there the goal is to sell yourself as a person.
With resumes, you aren’t supposed to include fun pictures of you and your dog, your likes and dislikes, or really much of anything personal.
However, more and more people are putting greater weight on finding people that are both capable of performing the intended roles as well as good cultural fits for an organization.
Guess what? Most resumes are so bereft of anything significant from a culture standpoint that they are dry enough to use as kindling.
Honestly having read hundreds of resumes at this point in my career, I would probably give an immediate interview to someone who included a picture of them and their dog on a submitted resume just for the sake of having something fun and new to talk about in the interview experience.
The main problem is that a LOT of people will check the boxes that need to be checked from a technology standpoint for any open position.
If all any hiring manager needs is someone to read a script and perform the same task over and over and over again then they can skip over all of the rest of this.
If all you want to hire is a transient button-pusher then go for it.
However, if you are trying to make something greater than the sum of the parts that make up an amazing team then you better damn well pay attention to culture and personality.
With more and more businesses struggling to find solid, dependable people just to keep their doors open, there are definitely things that business owners need to address on their end.
