Pernickety \Per*snick”et*y\, a.

1. pernickety adj : Finicky or fussy; demanding excessive attention to petty details or niceties; unduly particular; characterized by excessive precision and attention to trivial details;

Nothing screams ”I am unnaturally obsessed by excessive attention to trivial detail” than the pernickety resume.

In case you haven’t become acquainted with this particular type of resume, this document is all about numbers and headings.

For instance, a sub-heading “Name” is thoughtfully provided to help readers who may struggle with the concept. Can’t you hear recruiters all over the world ponder: “John Smith… hmm. Could that be an occupation or a skill?… has me stumped!”

Just this week, a resume arrived on my desk that took me on a journey of numbers, all formatted in a precise table a little like this:

… and, so it went on. And on.

And, er, on.

I’m sure the author had good intentions. He thought it was neat and tidy. I saw clinical, regimented, and yes, pernickety. Would a world of angst and turmoil await a resume without numbers? What were employers to do in such a chaotic world? Would they read the fourth page first? Or maybe the second? Anarchy in the office!

Or maybe, just maybe, without numbers and tables, people would start at the top, read down, turn the page and repeat. Easy peasy.

A resume is not a government report, a legal document or an instruction manual. It is, quite simply, a marketing document that sells your accomplishments and provides a value proposition.

It tells a story of what you’re like and who you are.

Do you want your resume to exude warmth, drive, energy and excellence, or do you want to define yourself as uptight, fussy and pernickety?

Scrap the tables, scrap the numbers, find resume samples that feel like you and then get started in earnest.

Imagine this:

Recruiter: So where do you see yourself heading in the next five years?

Ben the Executive: Good question, I don’t know. I’d like a new challenge.

Recruiter: Well, are you looking to take the next step up in your career, maintaining the status quo, or easing back?

Ben the Executive: I’m not sure.

Recruiter: Are you looking for the same industry or do you think you’ll try something new?

Ben the Executive: I guess I haven’t considered that yet. I just thought I’d look at what was around and see if I could see any challenging opportunities.

Recruiter: Right.

Ben the Executive: I have a lot of transferable skills. Perhaps if I gave you list of the type of things I could do, you could align them with a position you may have?

——- * * * ——–

If you’re thinking that this is a good way to annoy a recruiter, you’re right! But it’s not as rare as you may think.

Let’s take a closer look at Ben. He’s keen to get started on the job search, being frustrated and dissatisfied in his current role. He has no idea where he is heading, whether he wants to move to a different state or country or enter a new industry. A company name or type has not crossed his mind.

Despite his superior business savvy and a career that has been the envy of his peers, Ben has given no thought to his future other than the very short term—and that is out and away from where he is now.

His frustrations compound as he attempts to write his resume, knowing there is something wrong, but unaware of what.

In Ben’s desire to flee his current role, he mistakenly believes that the first thing he should do is write the resume and then everything will fall magically into place… despite nothing in life ever working that way.

He creates a resume that will suit a hundred different positions, in numerous different industries and he ends up with a one-size-fits all resume. Of course, he is dissatisfied with the outcome. The document is written without a target audience, country, or industry in mind. A disappointing interview with the impatient recruiter is another blow to Ben’s confidence. As far as the recruiter is concerned, Ben’s lack of decisiveness, his unfocused resume and his vague need for a challenge, indicates he is a leader incapable of making a decision. She won’t be recommending him for any roles she has coming up.

It is time for Ben to create a plan. Before writing his resume or seeking new work, he needs to take the time to establish his directions and preferences.

You can do this too.

In fact, as a job starts coming to an end, you need to take a personal and professional inventory. What did you like and dislike about this job and previous jobs? If you didn’t like the industry because it was cutthroat, hated working for a company with a poor reputation or questionable ethics, and suffered stress being a contract employee with no safety net, then it would be fair to say that a job with these attributes would or should not be on your list for next time.

On the other hand if you loved working with company-critical projects, enjoyed high-end strategy creation and execution and relished opportunities to sell,  then these should be key components of the type of role you’re seeking. When the recruiter says to you, “What type of role are you looking for next?” you can state your preferences and sound decisive and confident. This will help the recruiter assess if any of the appointments she has available may suit your experience and style.

Be honest with yourself. If you like jobs with prestige, power, respect and status, then working for a small business operation or a start-up, is unlikely to give you the type of environment you crave.

Little-by-little you’ll start to shape your future job as your insights grow and these will be crucial in articulating your value to others both at interviews and when you come to writing an audience-specific resume.

Wanting to leave your job and having no insight into your future career, infers your strategic and thought processes need work. There are professionals who can help, or you can start evaluating your motivators and preferences yourself.

Not taking the time now, may mean another job that “didn’t work out” and that may be even harder to communicate.

One of my job search advisory tweets sent out today (follow me @GayleHoward) received an interesting reply.

You’ll see the screen image of it here, where I advised jobseekers not to get too concerned with making the first draft of a resume perfect, but instead work to get it all down before starting to refine it.

The unexpected response from a follower posed the question, “Just like most writing, right”?

It’s true, yes, just like most writing.

But… just how much writing does the average person who is not a professional writer, actually do?

Would everyone know that it it is easier to brainstorm and throw any and all information into a document and then slowly and surely move and refine the content as the strategy starts to take shape? Depends on your job I guess!

Judging from people’s efforts that I see every day, they don’t! I see resumes where people have obviously toiled over the wording in the first page, only to get bored and tired in subsequent pages.(And it shows!)

Working on getting one paragraph perfect at a time could mean that after five or ten hours you have one almost-perfect paragraph… a job application deadline looming and a not-so-perfect middle sentence that continues to bug you!

Sometimes things seem very simple, but the fact is, you don’t know, what you don’t know.

If creating an information-dump of material and whittling it down to a strategic powerhouse of a resume is something you didn’t know, then no matter how simple it appears, the advice has done its job!

Let’s face it. Frankenstein’s monster wasn’t too pretty, nor was he effective.

Resumes often suffer the same fate.

It’s clear that the monster’s maker Dr Frankenstein, was better at sourcing and finding spare parts than overseeing the quality of the final product. Yet, despite the 1816 book by Mary Shelley, lessons have not been learned about the folly of stitching together spare parts to unleash something new on an unsuspecting public.

Cobbled together resume monsters are still seen today, strewn across the desks of recruiters worldwide; a source of dismay and loathing by those who have the misfortune to come into contact with them; monsters that stumble their way through a jerking, twisting narrative in ways that make little sense.

Just last week, I too was shocked to receive a Frankenstein resume.

The document, stitched together from old resumes, biographies, cover letters, job descriptions and more, was such an entanglement of first- and third-person references and conflicting tenses, that I wondered whether the Dr Frankenstein’s spirit had been invoked!

Take for example, the following:

John is a manager of world-renown and I enjoy being part of team. His expertise in uniting people to support global initiatives, has been a source of inspiration, and I have worked hard to deliver the profit outcomes and targets dictated by his employer. Specifically, I have:

• Developing a customer service focus to achieve long-term vision.
• Good communication and interpersonal skills
• Able to drive change and win acceptance for his ideas and strategies.
• Being at the forefront of conducting due diligence for new acquisitions.

Just in case you’re wondering what is wrong with this patchwork horror, let’s review.

• The document starts with third person, morphs into first person and then does it a couple of times more for good measure.
• The sentence, “Specifically I have:” should be followed by a series of bullet points starting with words in the past tense. Instead, we have a mish-mash of incorrect tenses and odd inclusions from job descriptions.

Hands-up if you use weasel words in your resume.

Weasel words, (thanks to my friend and colleague Karalyn Brown of Interview IQ who coined the term and shares my distaste) are namby-pamby, wishy-washy, nothing words and phrases. Yes, they can be jargonistic terms that people think sound cool like “results oriented” or “proven track record of achievement in” or “action-oriented” but for me, they’re less about well-worn clichés and more about well, nothingness.

Hands-up if you use the term “ability to” in your resume.

“Ability to” is a good example of  a weasel word. After all, you’re not really committing yourself by using it are you?

If you say you are able to do something, does it say you can do it?

Does it say you’re good at at?

No, it just indicates you have an ability to do it, presumably if the time is right and the planets are in alignment and you feel like doing it. Or maybe it says you could do it because you are able to, but you’re not very good at it, or you’re not experienced at it.

So tell me why you want to use this phrase in your resume again?

Think of all the things you may have the ability to do. Why the world is your oyster! Personally, I have the ability to be a great singer… if could hold a tune. But the ability to do so exists. I have a voice that is capable of making sound and I guess I could learn!

On the other hand, I am expert in writing resumes. I have more than 21 years of experience of positioning people to market themselves effectively for their next big gig. No ability to about it.

There are a lot of weasel words out there cropping up on resumes and underselling job candidates. Terms like “involved in” (what does that mean exactly?) and “arranged” and “organised”. In a resume these kiss-of-death words don’t even come close to describing what it is you do.

Don’t sell yourself short.

If you can do something and do it well, then claim it!