“If I Were a Carpenter”

Music aficionados will catch my homage to a great song covered by many top artists in the 60s and 70s. As much as I love that song, this blog isn’t about social issues. My concern isn’t with carpenters, millers or tinkers. It’s with resume writing and a creed every person who “works their hands in wood” knows. That is “Measure twice, cut once.”

What does that have to do with resume writing? Everything! A person who works with tangible objects is faced with physical reminders of their failures – a board cut too short becomes worthless. However, when taking short cuts on a resume, the writer might not understand the impact. Your resume is your board – it’s your natural resource. It has value. Once you send it out, it’s cut! If you send a poorly constructed resume with misspellings and grammar errors to a company, you’ve wasted your first and only chance to impress them. If your resume tells them that you take short cuts, your chance of getting that job falls into your pile of short boards. You can’t recut them and make them longer.

So, how do you write a good resume? First, make sure it tells what you actually do. Don’t sacrifice the story you’re telling to any preconceived notion of what a resume should be. Second, proofread, proofread, and then proofread again. Spell check is nice but it won’t pick up any word that’s in its dictionary. So, manager can become manger, angle can become angel and yes, I’ve even seen general become genital! Proofread…it’s worth the time. Third, consult the grammar police. If you’ve left a job, write your responsibilities in the past tense. If you’re still there, write them in the present tense. If you’re a professional in the work force, you wouldn’t refer to your college years as “I drink a lot of beer.” You’d say “I drank a lot of beer.” It’s in the past! So are your previous jobs.

What’s the moral of this story? If you want future employers to sing your praises, measure twice, cut once. It’s worth the extra effort!