Brian's World

New Year, Old Resume

I find working on my resume very boring and stupid. I understand its critical to help employers understand some basic facts about me and who I am, but I am very opposed to mindset that a resume must be updated before you apply to a job or something like that. I believe a resume should be updated when you do something or information changes that is displayed on your resume.

People have told me my resume is too long, because I believe in using both sides of the people. If you ask me, people who think differently are the dumb ones. If printing on the back of a sheet of paper involved anything more than flipping the paper over, I might not do it.. but it doesn’t. It seems stupid for me to take up any less than the allocated space when trying to explain to someone who you are and what you can do. I can do a lot, and I am difficult to describe. Nowhere on my resume does it say I enjoy wearing fancy clothes, but thats something a company may find interesting about me. Yes, I do understand that hiring managers may not like to flip the page over, or look to the other side. Thats fine, I see merit in presenting the most important information on the front. (Duh!). Quite honestly, if someone doesn’t want to turn a page over to read whatever few words I’ve placed there then they might just be too lazy of an employer to work for.

My dad feels it necessary to supervise my resume, as a manager hes certainly read more of them than me; but in that regard I would be he knows what he’s looking for. He doesn’t work in the computer field, and as an environmental/civil engineer I think its pretty safe to say that there is a moderately large divide between the two types of work. Regardless, I tend to make the changes he insists on, or else he will continue to harp on me every day forever.

I also dislike the “purpose” block lots of people use. I’ve heard people who say it should be tailored to the company they are applying for, or changed depending on the circumstance. I dunno about them, but my “purpose” when it comes to work doesn’t change that quickly. I’m not going to lie and say my purpose is to “Obtain an internship at a large financial group located in Springfield, MA converting reports from very old technology to new.” Thats just dumb. Right now I use an “Employment Interests” second to arrange keywords that I can’t fit into a sentence. I think there is value in including keywords on a resume. They give people a little idea of what you might know, and provide great points for elaborating on a topic during an interview.

In summary, I need to come up with a new resume design. Where projects serve as the main block. I need it to be flexible enough to present all the projects in a similiar fashion, but still specify that I did this project at school, and this one at company x. Another, secondary requirement, is the ability to generate it online. I think having a database of details about me would be helpful. I could choose some check boxes to opt to present certain data instead of others. I’d likely make this public so anyone could make a resume of me for them… who knows.

Today is also the 2nd of January, so I’d like to wish everyone a happy new year and everything associated with that. I have made no resolutions, so I shan’t be complaining about breaking them later, or bragging about completing them in 1 year.

I had more to talk about, but I’m feeling like I am no longer being productive.. time to find the Win XP cd and reformat the machine for my Aunt.

P.S You need to add my facebook application or else you may run out of air, or you will be skinned alive and then hung for dead in your closet. Don’t believe me? Just ask Jack. Don’t know Jack? Well then you clearly haven’t been on myspace lately… or he’s still in your closet/under your bed ready to get you. Stupid myspace bullitens.