Where are all the Jobs?: Why a Good Resume Is Not Good Enough

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Why a Good Resume Is Not Good Enough | Career Rocketeer

Link to Career Rocketeer - Career Search and Personal Branding Blog

Posted: 12 Sep 2011 03:30 AM PDT

The latest employment news coming out of Washington is frightening, but truth be told it could actually be twice as bad as the current 9.1% unemployment rate suggests. And if the President's newly announced stimulus initiatives are anywhere near as effective as the stimulus package he initiated when he first took office, you'll have a long wait until the effects trickle down to help you this time around – if at all.
In addition to the 14 million unemployed Americans competing for a limited number of available jobs, add to that 8.8 million other people not counted as unemployed – part-timers who want full-time work; then add to this number the countless full time workers who are gainfully underemployed, the self employed consultants who are still looking for a full-time job, and the growing number of internal candidates seeking a promotion all vying for the jobs you covet and are infinitely qualified for.
Examine these numbers closely and you will see why you no longer have the luxury of crafting and then perfecting your resume through the process of trial and error. There are a finite number of job opportunities out there and you can not chance losing even one of them due to a good – but not great – resume.
I speak to job seekers every day in person and over the phone, online in discussion groups, and via email. What surprises me most is that only a small minority think they need professional help to perfect their resume, while the majority thinks it is not harmful to their cause to constantly tinker with their resume based on the latest feedback they get from a blog, a friend, a stranger, a co-worker, or a recruiter.
So for those of you who are tinkerers I would like to offer an analogy you can surely relate to based on a situation that occurred to me this morning.
For a job seeker a great marketing document is as valuable to you as the computer in your home or office that is replete with all the vital and often irreplaceable data, music and photos you have worked so hard to accumulate.
Now imagine you are surfing the web looking for a job and accidently open an email and unleash a malicious virus on your hard drive. Faced with this dilemma you have two options. One is to immediately contact a professional who specializes in cleaning viruses with little or no adverse effects. The second is to visit website after website that may or may not be able to identify the virus and use the information you find to tinker with your computer to try and cleanse the virus on your own.
How many of you have been faced with this problem or know someone who has. I dare say unless you or they are a fully qualified techie the tinkering option was a non-option in most cases. And if you did take it I can only imagine the disastrous results you encountered.
In a competitive environment such as today's you can't leave to chance anything that can make a difference to your job search, such as your resume. Some people may overstate the actual importance of a resume, and they may be correct. Still, on the other end of the spectrum too many uninformed people negate its importance. This said, in this economy I suggest you adopt the mindset that you no longer have the luxury of taking anything in your job search for granted.
So when next you sit at your computer to tinker with your resume for the umpteenth time, think of it like a computer with a virus embedded in it. If you continue to tinker with it on your own all you'll do is exacerbate the problem and in the worse case scenario put yourself into total disaster recovery mode. That is not something you want to risk in a job search.

Author:
Perry Newman, CPC CSMS is a nationally recognized executive resume writer, career coach, AIPC certified recruiter and SMMU certified social media strategist known for his ability to help his clients get results. You can view his sample resumes at http://www.perrynewman.com, and email him your resume at perry@perrynewman.com for FREE resume critique.