Resume question (take II)

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Bruce Byfield notes that <<Contrary to many people's assumptions, a resume
is neither a complete nor an objective history of your employment. It is a
list of jobs and experience that qualify you for the job you submit it
for.>>

Yup. In fact, coming from an officially bilingual country, I've known for
longer than I care to recall that "resume" (acute accent on both e's) is a
French word that means "summary". And that's the key thing to remember: when
you write a resume, you're _summarizing_ and thereby highlighting the points
that you consider most important to a prospective employer. In this context,
"most important" means the ones that will make them sit up and take notice
and hopefully hire you. You should also draw attention to the most important
of these most important points in your cover letter, but this time, "most
important" means the ones that they're going to compare with the checklist
of job requirements as a first step in looking for an excuse to discard your
resume.

Contrast this with a "curriculum vitae" (Geoff's sloppy translation: "The
story of my life thus far" <g>), in which volume and length count for much.
But nowadays, at least in North America, you won't usually see someone
request a true C.V. for anything other than positions in academia or senior
management; you _will_ see frequent requests for resumes that the personnel
department incorrectly calls CVs, but that's a whole other issue.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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