For those who hire... what makes a resume stand out (long)

[Christina Rothwell <crothwell -at- bowstreet -dot- com>]

I have to agree with Kevin. I too used to think that the object section was
a waste of time and space, until I ran into rather funny situation back in
1997. So please read this if you have time for a funny story.

I had received a phone call from human resources saying they had received my
resume and they were interested in interviewing me for a technical writing
position. So I gathered my portfolio, thought of some questions to ask, and
researched the company.

The next day I sit down with a woman, who had not called me the previous
day, from human resources, and she starts asking me strange questions about
"creating reports" and some really manual office stuff. I thought this is
strange. Why is she asking me this?

I also noticed she is reading my resume for the first time. So I start
pointing things out on my resume, such as I had taken courses in HTML,
JavaScript, and C programming, and that I had experience using RoboHelp, all
of which were listed at the top of my resume. I also point out my experience
with creating manuals (also mentioned in my resume) and I even offer to show
one. 

At this point, she draws a blank face. "You are not in here for the office
assistant job," she says slowly.

At this point, I can feel my blood boil. "You want an office assistant that
knows C programming? Did you read my resume and my cover letter?" I say as
calmly as possible. Now, please do not think I am putting down office
assistants. They do an impossible job, but usually the job does not require
a knowledge of C programming. 

I had mentioned my objective in my cover letter, but somehow my resume and
my cover letter had been separated. Also, the woman interviewing me had
confused me with another job opening. 

Perhaps if she had seen something to the effect of "Objective: To obtain a
technical writing position while finding the holy grail" in blinking lights
at the top of my resume, she may have realized at once that she had made a
mistake. Then, again maybe that wouldn't have helped. I didn't have anything
in my resume to make her think I would want that position. I think she had
no idea what technical writers did, so perhaps the objective may not have
helped.

In any case, I decided that if they had this many problems with interviewing
people, it may not be a good place to work. I could just imagine meeting my
co-workers... "Hi, I'm a software engineer. I originally put my resume in
for sanitation engineer, but somehow they hired me as a software engineer.
Well, gotta go, I have to figure out what this C++ stuff is all about."  :)

Since then, my interviews have been a thousand times better. Later that
year, I landed a wonderful job with a major computer company, which didn't
require me to explain what is a technical writer.

Well, I hope you got a laugh.  :)

On the serious side, many times resumes are separated from their cover
letters and stacked into a pile. So if there is more than one job opening,
the person doing the hiring may not have time to read the entire resume to
figure out which position you want. Many times the resumes are passed
through several departments in a large corporation. If there is no
objective, people are left to guessing that applicant wants the same type of
position held in the past. 

Christina

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