Over the weekend, I was asked to take a look at a resume of a friend and gave him some advice on a section of his resume. His reaction was to tell me he didn’t want me reviewing that part of his resume and rejected my advice. The reason he gave for turning down the advice was that he wrote that part of his resume a year ago and it was good enough then – it doesn’t need to be changed now.
I had given some resume writing advice to this same friend a year ago. At the time, his resume was in really bad shape. There were no accomplishments and it read like a job description. I showed him how he could list specific successes. He made these changes at the time and his resume improved significantly.
Since then, he moved into a new position with the same employer and wanted to add this job to his resume. He added the new position and gave me the resume to review.
Although I reviewed his resume a year ago, I looked at the entire document again. The addition of the new position was ok. There were no accomplishments related to the new position, but he had only been in it a short time. The description was clear and concise.
I then read the rest of the resume. When I reached the skills section at the end of the resume, it was very brief. This individual works in construction and uses a number of specialized project management software packages. He has extensive experience with one of the packages most commonly by very large general contractors.
The resume listed the software packages in one line starting with “Experience with…” and then named about a half a dozen programs. This bullet does nothing to qualify the experience level with each software package. Did he work with some of this software for a short time more than five years ago? Does he work with these everyday and is an expert user? There is nothing on the resume to indicate the skill level.
Failing to show the skill level of key skills is common on resumes. I recommended to my friend that he provide more detail and information about the key software packages. His reaction was to tell me he only asked me to review his current position and didn’t want to change anything else.
The real reason he didn’t want to take my advice had nothing to do with the advice. What he was really asking me was to validate the quality of his resume. He wanted to hear how good it was so he could stop working on it.
“I Hate Writing My Resume”
There are a lot of job seekers who hate writing their resume. As far as tasks go, some people think almost anything is better than working on their resume. There are a lot of people that feel this way. For many, their reluctance to continue to work on their resume will hurt their job search.
If you absolutely hate working on your resume. Get help. Hiring a resume writer will make the process much easier and help you develop much more effective resume.