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Your resume won't get you a job, but it can take
you out of the running.
Regular visitors to WildJobSafari.com and The Daily Machete know this
already. Readers know to reduce the
number of "red flags" and eliminate funky fonts.
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Those are easy parts.
It's harder to eliminate verbal bloat. Not everyone is Ernest Hemmingway,
after all. And even Papa revised
his work over and over.
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I often tell my clients the story of the
fishmonger. When he opened his
business, he put a sign out front that read: "FRESH FISH FOR
SALE." One of his first customers
pointed out that all fishmongers sell fresh fish, because nobody
wants unfresh fish. So he rewrote his sign: "FISH FOR
SALE." Another customer pointed
out that all fishmongers sold fish, because nobody wants to rent
them. So the fishmonger again
changed the sign to simply read: "FISH." Yet another customer suggested that even
that one word might be too much, as the fishmonger had a store front
window, so people knew what he sold because they could see it from
the street. The next day, the fishmonger
took the sign down.
Following the fishmonger's technique to putting
prose on a diet can help your resume (except for that final step - you need
something on your resume, after
all). Here are some basic tricks:
Lose the first person pronouns. Since your resume is all about you, there's no
reason to use "I" or "we." Eliminating first person pronouns also
forces your words to work harder by making the tone less conversational.
Drop the "the." Also feel free to drop the "a." Instead of "increased the
profit," you can simply say "increased profit."
Kill the adverbs and adjectives. It's easy if you happily try to get rid
of those useless words.
Modifying verbs and nouns on your resume wastes space and can lead
the reader to think your writing skills are suspect.
IN THE CARAVAN: Put your resume prose on a diet the fishmonger way: don't use
first person pronouns, "the," or "a," and ditch adverbs
and adjectives.
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The Lion’s Pride: Resumes
