Putting the ‘Um’ in Your Resume

April 16, 2008 on 8:43 am | In Resume |

It was meant to be a joke, but there is some truth to it that the resume is the closest anyone would be to becoming perfect. No one would dare put an outright lie – although I know someone who almost got away with it, if only an HR person did not call us up in our school organization and verified if a certain someone was a remember – but how close to the truth are you actually?

By this I mean how much would you put in to emphasize some points in your resume. As a disclaimer, this is neither about stretching the truth nor exaggerating a task you did as part of your work experience. This is merely about accentuating the good parts in order to highlight them.

This is the nifty trick of using clever euphemisms to pad your resume. This somehow involves clever wit and creative wordplay. Again, let me remind you that no lies were used in creating this resume.

The very obvious area of the resume where a little figure of speech could be put into play is at the job description. Being bland and narrative does not work to some. Besides, how well you put it could give you some brownie points come interview time.

An example of this would be to depict one of your tasks as “ensuring quality customer service” when you actually mean that you add “Would you like fries with that?” as an auto response after getting the order or handing out a free apple pie to an irate customer because your companion fouled up his order.

Another place in the resume where you could play around are your job titles. It helps if you officially had that title, then it would not be hard for you to justify why you were a content analyst in your last job when what you did was check the layout, design, and actual content of webpages before they get uploaded. Since being an editor usually invokes thoughts of correcting spelling and grammatical errors, it would be better for your standing if you also have a more all-encompassing job title that connotes the diversity of the work that you did.

Fancifying your resume might also mean breaking the monotony of what is written. Sure, the last five jobs you had were all copywriting, headwriting, and freelance writing. Then why not put in something similar yet something different? What are synonyms for anyway? Put your writing skills into good use, especially if you are an one professionally.

From there, you could coin something new and hip like content provider. If you are doing it on the web, adding something like conceptualizer and composer of online digital content would have that futuristic techie feel although technically, you are still a writer deep inside.

Another idea and also another concept of resume composition is to itemize your tasks instead of position. This works well for the renaissance man. Instead of writing down plain old production assistant, you can enumerate the different things you did as PA like researcher, analyst, copy editor, and what have you.

For those who are trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel for any skill where they were not academically trained to specialize in, one could state instead the number of units related to the field you want to get in to. It is a plus if you have had additional training or employment somewhat close to the job you are currently applying for.

Turning one small skill set into something that you want to be perceived as have been doing for so long is quite a challenge. Just be sure to deliver if you are asked to. For example, dealing with people from different countries because of circumstance might make you an incidental diplomat. If you feel you could hack it fulltime, then give it a try.

In essence, it is about making things sound better than they usually do and bringing out every drop of goodness from an experience. Or maybe I am just stretching it. But, at least, you get the drift.