the lost chapters
And when you're done, lie some more
The average recruiter gets a shit-pile of resumes for every position they publish. If they offer what sounds even remotely like a great job, or -- god forbid -- mention a high salary, they get hundreds. Can you imagine walking into a restaurant and getting handed 200 menus? Maybe the food is supposed to be great. Maybe they'll offer to cook you anything you find buried down inside one of those documents. It doesn't matter. By the time you finish reading, you've lost your appetite.
Recruiters and their clients aren't terribly well-educated. They're just bureaucrats:
- They have too many resumes to read, and most of them are now "targeted": loaded with terms that nail the job description like a laser beam.
- They know that their real job is to find someone that fits their corporate culture, so most of the details are irrelevant. Yet if they ignore the details, they might have to explain why they picked that particular candidate.
- They have to verify, absolutely and beyond reasonable doubt, that you do not represent a threat. You have to be slightly dumber than the manager you will work for, and controllable. Sort of like their mildly retarded clone.
- In the end, they will probably hire either internally or based on a personal referral. Most of the resumes will be tossed or lost.
If you think that your tiny little resume is going to swim up this acid river of bullshit, pierce the recruiter's battleship defenses and impregnate them with your impressive characteristics, well, you need to CYM ("change your medication").
Here's the plan:
- Lie more, and better, than your competitors.
- Dun the known universe with your cover letter and resume.
- Be prepared with your bullshit story so you can pass the first (usually phone) interview.
- Work on your presentation and brown-nosing skills for the personal interview.
- Explore ways to get networked into a personal referral to a recruiter; this can save all of steps above.
- Anticipate a surprise attack, but prepare for a trench war. This may take longer than you think.
- When you do get hired, don't get pissy when your new employer tries to cash a few of the checks you've written with your big fucking mouth.
Meet Your New Friends
Is there anyone in your life who would lie, cheat and steal for you?
OK, how about anyone who would exchange totally unscrupulous behavior in anticipation of some mutual benefit? Getting warmer?
What about a former employer that you've got some dirt on: they had an affair with one of your co-workers, or embezzled money, cheated the IRS, or anything else you could nail them with?
These are your new friends. You'll need them to survive the fact-checking portion of your job search. Every recruiter who has seriously considered me for a job has asked for references, and gathered a detailed history of my prior work experience. Amazingly, only about one in three of these imbeciles actually checked any facts. But luck is like a mule: If you push her, she'll buck.
This is a good time to ask yourself if you have any sort of decent job history, or positive record of performance that would indicate you could find success in a normal employment relationship. But who are we kidding? You didn't buy this book because you wanted to learn how to fight fair. There are thousands of books like that. And as a permanently unemployed person, you'll have plenty of time to read them.
You bought this book to find out how to get your dream job right now. The only way that's going to happen is if some other poor stupid bastard doesn't get it before you. Or as George Patton declared, "The goal is not to die for your country. It's to get some other poor stupid bastard to die for his country." This also solves the nagging question of where I got all of the colorful language that decorates this tome.
So let's see how bad things are:
|
Regrettable Situation |
Horrible Result |
|
You have worked mostly underpaid jobs, or cash jobs like being a waiter or bartender. |
You're fucked: Even if a recruiter grudgingly recommends you, it'll be with the clear pre-set that you can be hired for peanuts. You won't get ahead, and you won't get any respect. |
|
You have been in and out of jobs. |
You're double-fucked: Recruiters hate people who can't stay put, or who jump at the slightest provocation. They want drones, not bulls. |
|
You have butted heads with some or all of your supervisors. |
You're triple-fucked: Recruiters will never recommend a "troublemaker." |
|
You never got a proper education, and never developed any special skills. |
I'm not even going to tell you how fucked you are. But hey, what's life without a little adventure? |
Don't get depressed. You've got friends. At least, you'd better have friends.
Meet Your New Job History
You and your "new friends" are going to re-write your entire job history. How you'll do it depends on how fucked you are:
- You can improve your recent history and lie about the rest. This is the most common approach because it only takes a little polishing to make big differences. Most recruiters don't really care what happened before about three years ago, except in broad strokes. And by broad, I mean they're too lazy to check.
- You can invent new qualifications and job titles to help you get a different type of job than you qualified for before. What the heck, we'll throw this in for style.
- You can re-invent yourself totally. This requires nth-degree support from credible friends. It's the hardest thing you can do because so much can go wrong. Then again, this is exactly how I got employed.
The dilemma of re-building your resume is not how to invent, but rather how to explain away the little mouse-droppings that you mindlessly leave in there, hoping no one will notice them. Professional salesmen -- and con artists -- subscribe to the belief that nothing succeeds like simplicity. By the same token, nothing kills a deal faster than a meandering, self-serving, complicated explanation. Your resume needs to look like a beautiful garden: gorgeous and growing and no threat to anyone. It must never look like a jungle full of poisonous lies. Our job is to turn your personal jungle into a nicely manicured garden.
Speaking of dangerous predators, have you looked over your shoulder lately? Are you 100% confident that if you mention any of your former employers, they will recommend you for your next job? If not, forget about them. Do not try to explain them; it's like explaining why you are not a child molester.
The Self Evaluation
For this exercise, you need a stack of 4x6 index cards. Starting about five years ago, create a new card for:
- Any formal education you can claim. Don't mention high school; if that's all you've got, congratulations on reading your first book!
- Every job you've had, or could claim you've had. Mark the starting and ending dates in bold. Add a neat list of the skills you learned or demonstrated there. If you got along with your boss, add a big plus sign, or a colored star. You could even get some of those stars that they give school kids when they don't pee in their pants for a week. If there were problems at the job, regardless of their nature, mark the card with some red demonic symbol.
- When you get to a period of unemployment, create a card for that, too, labeled "UNEMPLOYED" in red, including the starting and ending dates.
Now you should have a 100% contiguous job history.
Would you hire yourself based on this history? Probably not. Don't worry. We just do this sort of thing to get you through the worrying phase of your job search. Nothing is going to get worse than this personal audit. Think of your life to date as one grand fixer-upper: a promising property with a shitty little shack sitting on it. Pardon moi if I presume too much.
The First Revision
Now go through each card and embellish. In a unique and eye-catching color, add any bullshit job title that you might be able to get away with. Consider if you could bridge the employment gaps by lying, or simply blackmailing some of your "new friends" into revising the starting and ending dates, etc.
Looking any better? Ah well. This is how fiction got started.
The Second Revision
With a slightly more shocking color -- perhaps even a crayon -- start crossing out cards and replacing them with new cards describing jobs that you've never had, but could possibly have performed. This can't be too hard; haven't you ever thought to yourself, "I could do that job!" Well, here's your chance. Or, as Shakespeare was wont to say, "Life is but a dream within a dream within a dream." Or was that Timothy Leary?
Now that's show biz!
The question is: do you have any friends that could support this new and more fascinating story of your life? To be a real asset, they would need to be in business themselves, and have a working business phone number that they do not answer personally. They could list you as an employee and back up your horse-puckey.
Without someone to back you up, you only have two choices:
- You can claim that the business went bankrupt, and the management is no longer available. This really happens more often than you might think. Just don't use it more than once, or the stink-factor goes way up.
- You'll have to "wing it" with the new resume and hope that they don't call your previous supervisors. It's not at all out of the question. If recruiters never return phone calls, imagine how fidgety they are when they have to actually initiate a new phone call and do some difficult research. They hate it. But that doesn't mean they won't occasionally do it.
The Final Revision
This is where you evaluate your friends, consider your fantasies and nail down a true-life, verifiable bullshit job history. You'll have to show a little self-control here. Do as I say, not as I do.
Getting Your Friends to Back up Your Job History
How much is a career worth, anyway? When you don't have one, plenty. That's why you're going to have to get serious about forging your work history, and backing it up with recommendations from fake supervisors. If you do it right, it will take a little effort. That is to say, money. But the payoff will be enormous, because you can reuse everything in the future.
Let's say that you and six of your friends all want to develop better resumes. First, you must each buy a copy of this book. Otherwise, you will go blind. You've been warned!
In order to sell your new job history, you've got to find some way for a recruiter to "verify the facts":
The Easy Way
Do any of your friends or associates own a business? Have they owned it for long? If yes, is it the type of business with a general name -- "Jack Jones, Inc." -- that could sound like the sort of place an important person like you might work in your chosen career path? If so, simply:
- Pay for them to install a new phone line.
- Make sure it is listed in the White and Yellow Pages, and on the Internet if possible.
- List the phone under the business name, not a person's name.
- Have the phone installed in your friend's office.
- Pay a few extra bucks a month to attach voice mail, and have it recorded by anyone you think sounds like a snooty secretary. "Helloooo… this is Jack Jones' corporate offices. Please leave your puny voice on my very expensive answering machine, and I may call you back." You get the idea.
- Your friend will always know that when the phone rings, it is either a telemarketer or someone checking out your references. He will have a copy of your resume handy, and will gush and glow about you like he is referring a Nobel laureate.
Why It Works
Who could deny that you worked at this place? If they look the business up, they will find that it has been around for years. Your resume will only refer to you during that period of time. There is absolutely no way to see through this trick.
How It May Fall Apart
Your "supervisor" must be business-like, relaxed, confident and ready to back up your story. It may be hard for your high school chum, the auto mechanic, to refer you for a chair in quantum physics at Harvard. Just keep it to a dull roar and everything will fly.
Limits of its Effectiveness
Smart recruiters don't give as much credit for working at small companies. They know the relationships are close, and that the facts get embellished. This reference is only as strong as the cache of the company itself.
With Money and Time
Scenario #1 is quick, down and dirty. But it is limited because most of your friends either don't have businesses, or they're not the kind of businesses you would like to include in your resume. You can take this whole thing one big step further by simply inventing businesses -- one for you and each of your friends -- and referring each other from business to business.
It's not hard to start a business. If you don't intend to sell to the public out of your location ( ha-ha ), all you have to do is to file a fictitious name statement with your city government, and run an ad in a local newspaper for five or six weeks. Here's how:
- Look up the county government offices nearest you. Go there and fill out a Fictitious Name Statement.
- While you're standing in line at the county clerk's office, look around for advertisements for local "legal" newspapers: presses whose sole purpose is to publicize fictitious business names. They usually offer coupons in their advertising flyers. If you can't find one of these within three blocks of the county offices, bring your camera: either the Martians have invaded, or pigs are flying.
- Go to the legal newspaper and hand them another twenty bucks or so. Fill out a form.
- Congratulations! You're the owner of a new business.
- Go back to Scenario #1 above and implement that strategy. You are now the "supervisor" for one of your friends. They will follow these steps and become your "supervisors." You can use each other on your resumes.
Why It Works
You have all of the strengths as Approach #1, but you can now invent more creative and specific business types. If you want a job in advertising, get one of your friends to start a business with an impressive ad-company type of name.
How It May Fall Apart
If any recruiter or hiring manager looks the business up in the official county records, they will find out that it has only been around for a few months. That'll really charm them. You could always claim that the business took on a new name, and that it existed under some other corporate format previously. Just remember: a good story doesn't require an explanation. Once you start trying to make sense of things, you're on a slippery slope. Even if you're telling the truth, it sounds like a lie.
Limits of its Effectiveness
This works best when you and your pals plan it over at least three years. That way, no one can debunk the age of the businesses. Hey, how long did the Trojan War take? More than three years, my friend.
With Little Money and Even Less Time
You can carry out Scenario #2 without filing for a business license. You should still get legal telephones; recruiters find private phone numbers about as charming as doggy-doo on a brand new carpet.
You're winging it here. You should make your luck, not break it.
With No Money and No Time
Did I tell you just how fucked you were? Okay, okay.
For your most recent position, list at least three years of experience at a company that went out of business. Look up a large, prestigious business in your area that failed. That's your most recent history. Make up any story about your employment that suits you and your goals. If the recruiter looks into it, what can you say? Bob Johnson was your supervisor, but you don't have his home phone number.
Use the same technique on the former employers, but make them more obscure. You can even create some companies if you like. Chances are, the recruiter won't try too hard if the position is more than three years old.
We won't bother analyzing how effective it is, or how it might fall apart. You know the boat you're rowing.
Meet Your New Skills
Skills are just like mini-jobs; they're things you're supposed to know how to do. That's why you're going to take your stack of job cards and do the same thing for your skills. Or if this is growing tedious -- and you're running out of colored crayons or cutesy stars -- just write all over the cards you already have. Your skills are supposed to line up with your jobs anyway.
We live in an age of specialty. Everybody is supposed to have several dozen skills that can be described in acronyms. This protects the idiot bureaucrat who will eventually hire you from having to actually learn what the fuck you do.
Don't be surprised that skills and their descriptions seem confusing. They're meant to be confusing. The recruiters want to know if you have any specialties, and they're darn well going to give a specialty a specialized name, dad-gummit.
The joke's on them: employers and recruiters have created so many specialties that they can't keep track of them. You can list many of these on your resume without any knowledge at all. The only risk is that you will be tested, or quizzed -- but you can prepare for that. You should be so lucky as to have those kinds of problems. Most of your competitors won't list enough specialties, and will wonder why their calls have gone unanswered. You will get interviewed.
Learn the names of your "new" career specialties, at least by their abbreviated, obfuscated, acronymic names. The more you repeat these verbally and in writing, the more transfixed the recruiters will become. They may very well hire you without even finding out how you ever learned their "secret language." Fuck ‘em if they can't take a joke.
So how do you find all of this crap? Easy. Read the job ads for your new "specialty". The idiots who spew out this dirge love to mention all of the skills they're looking for. They think they're going to find qualified candidates in the same way that they find a new part for their car: specify the component and plug it in. That's why they're called bureaucrats: they shun life's macroscopic complexities and hide behind its most obscure details. Think of an ostrich with its butt in the air and its head safely hidden in a hole.
When you're finished, you should see the blueprint for your new resume, including a comprehensive, persuasive job history and a mind-boggling set of acquired skills. Never mind if it's all bullshit; we'll fix that later. See How to Learn Anything in a Weekend.
I can't stop the nuclear arsenal developed by huge corporations and their deviant minions, the recruiters. But I can give you the same nuclear arsenal. It's called an EPF ("even playing field"). Eventually, either the system will change, or it'll fall apart. I'll be delighted either way.
I've read every major book on resumes, and I can tell you one thing: they're mostly crap. The authors obviously think they know how to present you to a potential employer. But they miss the big picture:
- Resumes are not read by employers, but by recruiters.
- Recruiters don't read resumes; they scan them.
- Most recruiters are too busy to even scan resumes, so they use software to interpret what the resume contains, and if it matches the job requirements.
- Most resumes are emailed after they are received. The fax machine is the "new" record player. Resumes must comply with text standards, or they get lost.
- Resume writing is not an exercise in English. It's an exercise in manipulating someone who thinks they understand English. Most resume writers are so busy trying to show off their college degree that they bore the reader to tears.
- Regardless of how your resume looks, a personal referral or contact is a hundred times more powerful. Most recruiters hire from personal contact, but they are too busy to make much personal contact. They require paperwork, but don't trust it. That's why so many of their decisions seem arbitrary.
- After you do get an interview, you can bring a traditional resume along with you to demonstrate your work history. The hiring manager may use it to avoid staring at you. This is the only time the resume will be of any value. Otherwise, it's toilet paper.
We will solve these problems by creating a resume that will get you an interview. Freed from the high-brow methodology of resume writing, and armed with our creativity and imagination, we will reinvent you as the perfect employment candidate. As for the recruiters: fuck ‘em if they can't take a joke.
Find the Keywords for Your Industry or Profession
A keyword is any noun that describes a role or skill that recruiters look for in job candidates. Because recruiters now rely so heavily on resume scanning software, keywords are your ticket straight into an interview. If your career path is Administrative Services, your keywords are things like:
computer skills
dictation
appointments
travel arrangements
call screening
office management
Where do you dig this stuff up? As usual, there are two ways: the easy way and the hard way. The hard way is to buy a dozen job-finder books and painstakingly scrape the keywords out of their voluminous content. But even if the books were published within the past year, their keywords have already gone stale. The electronic age is fickle!
The easy way is to let someone else do the work for you:
- Create a new text file for your keywords (for help with creating a text file, see Name Your Resume File).
- Look at a few job ads for your chosen profession. Find the keywords that describe the position. In this example, I have highlighted the keywords for you:
Office manager for high-tech accounting firm. Typing 120 wpm. Weekly dictation. Must know MS Office Suite. Heavy phones.
Either copy-and-paste or simply type each of these keywords into your text file and save the file with a name like Admin Keywords.txt.
Repeat this for a dozen or so ads that you would eventually like to respond to.
You'll use these keywords in the steps that follow.
- Using your Internet Explorer, go to any major online job board (http://www.monster.com, http://hotjobs.yahoo.com, etc.)
- Log in as an employer, not a job seeker. If you have to, create a fictitious account. Do not pay any money! Most sites offer a "trial" basis so you can see what they have to offer. If they don't, try another site.
- Search for candidates for the job you actually want to get hired for, for instance, Executive Assistant. Add a few of the keywords you just found in the steps above. Always quote multiple-word phrases. Leave everything lower-cased. If you use a hyphenated keyword phrase, replace the hyphen with a space, and quote that as well:
"executive assistant" excel word powerpoint "ms office"
- When you get the list of candidates, guess what? These are your competitors. Guess what else? They've just showed you how to get a job using keywords!
- Open each candidate's resume and copy-and-paste or type the keywords from the entire resume into your keyword file. Keep going until you have a hundred or so unique keywords.
Your Calling Card: The Plain Text Resume
If you look in the public library (are there any left?) under "Resumes," you'll find hundreds of old books describing how to build a beautiful resume, from gorgeous fonts to the most elegant papers. Can you sing the theme song to The Way We Were? This would be a good time.
Every year since 1994, the Internet has hyperbolically changed the way we communicate. The only reason I ever go to my physical mailbox is to pluck the occasional bill out before tossing the remaining junk into the recycle bin. We live in an electronic age where everyone is expected to communicate through email. That's why our first project is to put the spit-shine on your most critical piece of communication: the plain text resume.
Don't despair. If you've spent a lot of time in Photoshop creating an eye-popping resume, keep it around. We'll adapt it later on when we get closer to an interview.
Resume Format
Experts drone on about the "critical choice" in resume format:
|
Functional |
Lists your roles, skills and qualifications. Meant for college graduates who have no experience. No one takes this sort of resume seriously. |
|
Chronological |
Focuses on employment history in chronological order, with the most recent job first. Neat and tidy, but boring. |
|
Combination |
Combines the two stodgy concepts above into a slightly more appealing mess. |
The electronic age demands more. Many recruiters now enlist scanning software to filter thousands of resumes into one small stack of relevant candidates. To scam these guys, we have to think like they do -- or at least how their software does. But we can't lose track of the possibility that one out of a hundred of these retarded imbeciles will actually read the resume. It needs real flow, even if it is bullshit.
Choose a Text Editor
"Plain text" just means that we only use basic ASCII characters ("a," "K," "9") and a little punctuation, and that we store the document as text. We create the resume in a program like TextPad or NotePad that is specifically limited to text. This makes the resume instantly email-friendly. It also eliminates any worry about the size or type of font (it's ignored) or any other special treatments that you've grown fond of.
Find your favorite text editor and open it now. Yes, I mean now.
When the editor opens, it usually starts with a blank document. Press the SPACE bar once (to leave the impression that you've done something) and then use File/Save. When asked for a file name, you really have two important choices: where to put your resume files, and what to call them. Make a folder on your computer for your resumes:
My Documents\Resumes
Inside that folder, save this new file with a name based on the job title and -- if possible –- the recruiter you plan to send it to. Add the date at the end of the file name, with the days, months and year separated by dashes. Leave the suffix off if you wish. The text editor will add ".txt" for you:
My Documents\Resumes\Executive Assistant Resume for ABC Company 00-00-0000.txt
Turn word wrap on inside of your editor's setup options. If offered, set the word wrap length at 76 characters. As you type this resume, make sure that no line goes beyond that magic number. If it does, hit the ENTER key to move to the next line.
Type Your Name
Every resume should start with your name. You don't need to add "resume of." If they don't know this is a resume, we should check them for ray guns.
PAT CANDIDATE
Leave this on the far left margin. Consider all caps for the name only. If the name is extracted by a software program, it will probably stay in all caps, which could get you a little more attention. Otherwise, be sparing with all caps. They're quite irritating.
Add Your Address and Phone -- But Which One?
When asked what languages he spoke, the American businessman said, "American, of course!" The Japanese businessman said, "Whatever language my customer speaks."
That's also how you will pick your address: this will always be conveniently located nearby wherever you apply for work. If you intend to apply outside of the city where you reside, you'll need to get creative here. Do you have friends that live in your ideal work city? Use their address. In the worst case you may have to rent a mailbox in the city you desire to work in and use that address. Many mailbox services still allow you to show your address as:
1200 Mill Road #122, El Paso, Texas 00000
instead of:
1200 Mill Road, PMB 122, El Paso, Texas 00000
The dreaded "PMB" ("Personal Mail Box"), indicates that you're not really living there, or that you may have something to hide.
Do not try to tell potential future employers that you are "willing to relocate." That's like telling your future mate that you're "willing to stop having sex with other people." Recruiters want to deal with local candidates. Otherwise, you're just another hobo with a tale to tell and a song to sing.
Your phone number is even more vexing. If you have a friend in the city where you wish to be employed, they may be willing to let you use their number. They can take their name off of the answering machine, replacing it with, "Hi, you've reached 000-0000. Leave a message…"
If this doesn't work, you can buy a phone number in virtually any major city from a unified messaging company. It's not as expensive as you might think. Voicemail is always included, and can be forwarded to your email account. For a list of current providers and the cities they service, go to your favorite Internet search engine and type:
+"unified messaging"
Include Your Email Address, and Pick It Carefully
Your email address goes next. And I don't mean the one you use for porno sites. The recruiter doesn't know you. Like any other feature, your email address can indicate something positive or negative without you even suspecting it.
You can use any public email address. You should not use an address given to you by your TV or table provider, since you'll lose it if you decide to change service or move. Always use a true "public" email address from Yahoo, MSN or other huge, reliable, independent provider.
This would be a good time to get a new email address specifically targeted to your next profession. Companies love it when your email address reflects their value system. If you wanted to work in science, look around for public sites that specialize in science. You would be amazed at how many of these actually host email accounts. You might have to pay a few bucks a month. Consider it an investment in your next job. If that doesn't work, search Google:
+"free email"
You'll get loads of sites offering free and paid email accounts. Find one that sounds scientific.
Use your own personal name as the user name. Don't get clever or cute. Most recruiters already go home and slap their own precocious kids. They don't need another one.
Avoid adding numbers to the end of your name if at all possible. If you're named John Smith, you might be out of luck. Use your middle name. Try to keep it simple and clean:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Type this email address just below your physical address.
Hit the carriage return to create a blank line before the next section.
Don't State a Career Objective
Some writers include objectives as a way of sneaking more keywords into the resume. This can seem pedantic, and obstructs the flow of the resume. Besides, it's just plain old-fashioned.
Don't Get Into Your Education -- Yet
When you list your education this high on a resume, it means that you don't have any experience.
Recruiters, like businesspeople, love education. Sometimes they even insist on it. They just want to know that you're a normal worker bee. They aren't looking for Henry David Thoreau and his Walden Pond. They want frat-boy Jimmie or frat-girl Joanne to purge their teenage angst by getting groped at parties, barfing up their guts, and eventually coming to their senses and getting real jobs.
Yes, they remember college. They went to college. That's how they know that every year of real-world experience is worth five years of regurgitating dull lectures in multiple-choice roulette.
Skip the education for now. We've invented a whole work history for you, and you are going to use it.
State Your Profession and Qualifications
When you declare who you are, always refer to yourself as your new employer's ideal job candidate. Either repeat their job title, or embellish it slightly to make it seem even more fitting. Then add your bullshit "qualifications" by blending words from the job ad with the keywords you netted in the earlier steps. Keep your fake work history in mind, too: this all has to tie together.
Let's say you're applying for this job:
|
Executive Assistant We're currently seeking an experienced administrative professional to become the Executive Assistant within the fast-paced, constantly changing environment of our Topeka, Kansas office, providing advanced secretarial and administrative support. Working with minimal supervision, you'll report to the General Manager for our Midwest territory. Duties and responsibilities:
Qualifications:
|
Review your actual work history. Does any of it match? Did you create a new history for yourself to fill in the gaps? Do you still have that keyword file you saved a while ago? Great! You're ready to continue.
Instead of typing the word "Qualifications," mimic the job title:
Senior Executive Assistant
You've already received your first promotion. Why go for a regular executive assistant when you can be a "senior" one? (If you're less than 25 years old, stick with "Executive Assistant").
Add your "qualifications" next. We won't worry about duties and responsibilities here. We'll just repeat the qualifications cited in the ad, but with a few changes to conceal the fact that we're chattering like a parrot:
5 years' proven success as Senior Executive Assistant in a variety of challenging environments, including office management.
Expert computer skills: proficient with entire MS Office Suite, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Typing 122 wpm.
Dictation 61 wpm.
Take appointments, perform call screening, make travel arrangements.
Excellent scores in math and geometry.
Superb grammar skills.
Acclaimed soft skills.
Highly organized.
Prioritize tasks to ensure timely completion.
Top grades in College Associate program. High school diploma.
Can you pick out the keywords that we reaped in our earlier discussion?
Why state the exact words-per-minute for typing and dictation? Because they're details, and details sell. Hopefully, you can type and take dictation!
Hit the carriage return a couple of times to create some space below this section.
List Your (Bullshit) Work Experience
Type
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
I don't mind the all caps here. It's the only way to indicate a heading in a text document. We won't make a habit of it.
Review the keywords you gathered earlier. Do you see any that fit into the duties and responsibilities of the job ad?
Pull out the index cards you were supposed to have made during your heart-wrenching self-analysis in earlier chapters. You know, just before we began making everything up.
Now meditate for a moment. You are:
- Manageable and controllable; able and willing to do whatever your employer needs.
- A professional and a team player. Imagine your favorite sports star.
- A problem-solver.
Keep these thoughts in your head as you lay out your work experience. Your self-confidence should ooze from every word you are about to type.
Let's list your most recent job. Use a tab after the company name:
ABC Corporation August {year} -- September {year}
Add your job title, which must always reflect the title of the job you are looking for:
Senior Executive Assistant
Now let's start adding things that you "did". I'm just reading these off of the job ad's list of "duties and responsibilities" and altering them slightly:
Supported Regional Manager in highly charged, fast-paced administrative environment.
I stole the phrase "fast-paced" from their opening paragraph, and added "highly charged" to reflect their words "constantly changing." This is called asymmetry: repeating something either out of order, or changing the way it looks without losing the connection to its source.
Recognized for the ability to work independently and with little supervision within management guidelines.
This one is touchier than it looks: how do you work without supervision but stop short of looking like General Custer? You add the qualifier that you always did so "within management guidelines."
Performed key daily tasks, including mail, checks, expense vouchers and other related matters.
Reorganized and restated what they said, changing the phrase "expense forms" with "expense vouchers."
Compiled reports and issued memos on tight deadlines. Maintained a distribution list to guarantee accurate and timely receipt by key stakeholders.
Combined a few of their related requirements about reporting. This can also make it seem less like dull repetition. Threw in the high-tech term "stakeholders" for splash.
Researched and designed reports and presentations for departmental meetings with minimal supervision.
Blah, blah, blah.
Protected the company's confidentiality in all matters.
Play the loyal lap-dog as needed.
Planned and scheduled a full executive agenda, including meetings, travel, hotel and transport.
Great! Lots of action verbs show that you do things and don't just say things.
Now add your previous job, making sure that the gap between them is only a month or so. Try to get back five years or more with these two positions.
UN Limited January {year} -- July {year}
This time make the job title slightly more humble. You did grow, after all!
Executive Assistant
Since you are showing consistency in your career, this job should include all of the main accomplishments the company is looking for, only on a smaller scale:
Performed daily tasks for the General Manager, including mail, letters, memos, meeting schedule and reports.
Entrusted with processing weekly payroll.
Responsible for making travel arrangements: flights, hotels and rental vehicles.
Took dictation and transcribed verbal notes into action items.
If your friends can back you up, or if you have actually worked in recent years, it is ideal to show five years at your last position. If you show less than three years, the recruiter will harass you about why you left. We'll discuss how to deal with that later.
Chances are that you are making a lot of this up, and that your real provable career history is full of holes. You really do have to decide whether to use any of it or simply toss it in favor of a more seamless fairy tale. See the earlier chapters for my advice on your long-term strategy.
Depending on your age, you can add one more position that lasted for five years. Maybe you were just a humble "Secretary." That lends even more depth to your long-term career commitment. If you are under twenty-five, forget about it. The recruiter will expect a lemonade stand.
Give Them a Glimpse of Your War Medals
This often-overlooked area of the resume is for Certifications. I know what you're saying: you haven't got any. Does Michael Jackson have any war medals? Sure he does; they're all over his dinner jacket! Now you can have some, too.
For most job seekers, a "certification" is just a piece of paper saying that you did something very well. Technically, this could include "Best Pie" at your family cook-out (that is, if you were applying as a chef). Every positive feature of your resume can be backed up by some fictitious award, certificate, bonus or other congratulatory horse-shit. If pressed, we can generate these on most word processors, including official-looking stamps.
Some professions -- computer programmer and even resume writer -- are regulated by official agencies who issue certifications. Never traipse on these daisies. Do not tell recruiters that you graduated with honors from Harvard! Some of this stuff is actually public information!
CERTIFICATIONS and ACHIEVEMENTS
Presidential Award of Excellence, {year}
Achieved maximum annual bonus for exceptional performance: ABC Corporation, {year}.
Most Valued Employee: UN Limited, {year}.
You can do that, right? So why not make up fifty of them? Because certifications are like oregano: a little makes you a pizza. A lot makes you a-gag-a. These are only sincere and valuable when they spice up the resume. If you add too many, the recruiter's hackles will go up like something out of Alien. But why did we skip "Most Valued Employee" in {year}? Because you came in second to that secretary with Multiple Sclerosis -- the boss felt so sorry for her. Asymmetry, asymmetry, asymmetry.
Now Drag Out Your Degree
If you're desperate for a job, you probably don't have much to show here. Don't waste your time with your high school certificate: that's like taking your Disneyland Bumper Card receipt down to the Department of Motor Vehicles and asking them to issue you a Class IV license for a semi-tractor trailer.
Try to polish this up a bit. If the job wants a Bachelor of Science and you have a Bachelor of Arts, try this:
EDUCATION
University of Tampa Bay Barf-And-Play
Bachelor's Degree, Administration
You could also lie. If you are over thirty years old, the recruiter will probably not check. Still, Harvard is out of the question.
Some Precautions
- Don't include salary information.
- Don't list scores from tests.
- Don't attach a photograph.
- Don't state whether you are available for travel.
- Don't include the date you prepared your resume.
- Don't use the word "resume"; that's obvious.
- Don't use "references furnished upon request."
- Don't email your resume from your current job site. This is a "low class" resume-stopper.
- Don't include superfluous information in your resume, including your age, sex, etc. Some
- Do not use HTML and special effects.
- State accomplishments rather than responsibilities. Be specific. Don't bury these; showcase them.
- Always list most recent work experience first.
- Include detailed activities as well as job titles.
- Include detailed activities versus functions.
- Don't explain too much; it gets boring.
- Stay with successes rather than long narratives.
- Don't show job-hopping.
- Don't show periods of unemployment.
- Don't say why you left your last job.
- Don't show a history of unrelated positions.
- Watch out for word repetition, including language such as "experience", etc.
- Never use "I" or "My."
- Start with action verbs when possible.
- Watch out for clichés.
- Keep statements brief and direct.
- Use bullets.
- Watch out for global or philosophical statements, except when the author of this book decides to trot them out.
(Drum Roll)
Here's your complete plain text resume to send in response to this job ad:
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PAT CANDIDATE ============================================================================== SENIOR EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT 5 years' proven success as Senior Executive Assistant in a variety of challenging environments. Proficient with entire MS Office Suite, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Typing 122 wpm. Top scores in math and geometry. Superb grammar skills. Acclaimed soft skills. Highly organized. Prioritize tasks to ensure timely completion. Top grades in College Associate program. High school diploma. ============================================================================== PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABC Corporation August {year} -- September {year} Awarded consecutive bonuses for excellence in supporting the Regional Manager in highly charged, fast-paced administrative environment. Recognized for the ability to work independently and with little supervision within the authority of my direct supervisor. Compiled twelve monthly reports and dozens of daily memos on an urgent basis and with little time for preparation. Maintained a distribution list to guarantee accurate and timely receipt by key stakeholders. Researched and compiled departmental analyses; presented these to monthly budget meeting. Planned and scheduled a full executive agenda, including meetings, travel, hotel and transport. Performed key daily tasks, including mail, checks, expense vouchers, and other related matters. Achieved maximum security clearance. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- UN Limited January {year} -- July {year} Entrusted with the General Manager's entire executive agenda, including mail, letters, memos, meeting schedule, and reports. Solely responsible for weekly payroll. Met critical reporting deadlines. Responsible for reserving flights, hotels, and rental vehicles on very short notice. ============================================================================== CERTIFICATIONS and ACHIEVEMENTS Presidential Award of Excellence, {year} Achieved maximum annual bonus for exceptional performance: ABC Corporation, {year} Most Valued Employee: UN Limited, {year}. ============================================================================== EDUCATION University of Tampa Bay Barf-And-Play |
Now the real fun begins.
