Good Resume, Bad Resume

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Okay okay, so maybe not everybody reading this blog is working already. But for those who are working already, I'd like you to take a look at your resumes and see how much of that is actually a wad of lies. Sure, maybe most of them are based on true facts but if you check harder, you'll realize how much padding they've already received just by being "phrased in a good way". Like photoshopping pictures of ugly you. Well, I'm not really going to criticize that, since lying to get hired is a given already and everybody probably does it in one way or another.

What I will do, however, is to at least even out the field by giving more ways of turning that resume into the bibliography of a million-dollar superathlete genius who is the direct offspring of a greek God. If you're doing a bad thing, you should at least do it good enough for it to be worth the risk of getting caught, right? So here's my short examples of of the good, the bad, and the unhirable.

Bad Resume Entry:
Failed board exam but with relatively high grades.
Good Resume Entry:
Satisfactory high grades; pending first board examination.
(protip: If at first you dont succeed, it never happened.)
Get-What-You-Want-Now Resume Entry:
Due to the my academic performance, the PRC has decided that I should skip the Board all together, because I might ace it so badly, they'd lose their credibility in testing new engineers.

Bad Resume Entry:
Last place in a four-school intercollegiate Computer Programming Contest.
Good Resume Entry:
Inter-University Programming Competition Semifinalist.
Get-What-You-Want-Now Resume Entry:
Entered Inter-University Programming Competition but won the Nobel Prize instead. The judges of the competition ruled the presence of another award-giving body within the competion as outright cheating. After a long legal battle, an out-of-the-court settlement was reached and it was decided that we would have to settle for a fourth place and have our names placed in the Nobel list of unsung winners instead.

Bad Resume Entry:
In charge of logging minutes for corporate meetings I'm not even assigned to.
Good Resume Entry:
Brainstorming session facilitator, ensures proper influx of thought paradigms across the organization.
Get-What-You-Want-Now Resume Entry:
Undercover anti-communist propaganda auditor for national security service comissioned by company president to monitor all activities while posing as lowly company secretary.

Actually, you dont have to go overboard with the lying. Getting the job this way won't be hard. It's the "keeping the job" part that'll get tricky. You dont want your boss going "HEY, I THOUGHT YOU COULD TYPE TELEKINETICALLY!" after catching you touch typing when he's supposedly not looking.

But maybe I'm just looking too far into the future. Sorry, I kinda told my employers I'm Nostradamus in my previous life. (and I'm not even into reincarnation LOL!)

Okay, this is one messed up post.

But, since we're all for balance here, we'll be offering you defense against stupid resume entries like these. Tomorrow: How to read Resume's like a pro.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hahaha... Reminds me of how I write resumes (plural coz friends ask me to edit their resumes as well).
By the way, this doesn't apply to resumes only but to interviews as well. That is if you're quick-witted enough to do it on the fly.
But you're right that keeping the job is harder than getting it. The company I was from was quick enough to hire me but decided after a year that they're better off without me. And after that it was just as easy getting the job I have now. But this time, there's no problem in keeping the job coz how can they find out the half-truths if my real job description is "petiks" engineer. d=

Anonymous said...

that's what you call being optimistic... thanks for visiting my blog

 

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