Business Insider has a long series of resume tips,
interview tips, and lists of things not to do when job hunting, and it starts
here. The tips are presented in a series of panels that resemble Power Point slides.
Today, the attitude is “less is more”. Don’t put hobbies, references, even “objectives”. Avoid wordiness. Quantify your accomplishments. According to the intro of the panels, the average recruiter spends six seconds on a
resume before making a “preliminary” decision.
The list goes easy on the recommendations for online
reputation.
When I was working with an outplacement company in
2002, more “detail” was considered acceptable. For example, I wrote:
“ Facilitated cross-selling, by
installing new life insurance products on legacy systems. I installed these
products by modifying and testing Assembler code in CFO and sometimes in
(COBOL) VLN legacies, and then by providing interfaces to the salary deduction
system. Often the work involved revising batch JCL and procs with
considerations for restart, recovery, and generation data groups.
“ Enabled efficient customer service
and cross-selling after merger, by implementing legacy replications and
gateways to a common GUI customer service workbench. I wrote these replications
in COBOLMVS and DYL280, and I wrote a COBOL II CICS gateway to a Vantage-NBU
(new business) system, using XPEDITER as a development debugging tool.
“ Enhanced security of an accounts
payable system with a new signature approval process. I created a new batch job
with COBOL, VSAM and JCL. I also supported a vendor supplied accounts payables
system (MSA) and supported 4GL Information Expert (IE) modules, while on one
occasion reformatting checks.”
Way too much? A mouthful of words? By today’s standards, yes. Maybe not in 2002.
There’s something else about the “6
seconds”. I spend maybe three seconds on
an email trying to get my attention for publication, before deciding if it’s
relevant to what I do. When someone
communicates with me, I take it as like sending a “resume” or maybe a “query
letter” to “get published”. I know the
other side, now. I really don’t have
more time, when there are thirty of these a day.
I suspect that the major television
producers (Anderson, Nate, Ellen, Kelly,
The View, etc) find the same thing with (scripted) emails from people who want
to be on the show. There are just too many of them.
Here’s something else about online
reputation. The Maryland legislature just passed a bill forbidding employers
from asking for social media passwords, Baltimore Sun story here.
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