Logophilia and the Resume Writer

Resume writers by nature are logophiles. Show us a thesaurus— or a great list of strong key words that speak to specific industry requirements—and we salivate. Strangely, the resumes of some job candidates I have reviewed fall into one of two categories: verbosity to the point of absurdity, or brevity to the point of reductionism.

Professional resume writers have honed the skill of utilizing the right words that will have the right impact to get job applicants the right interviews.  Too often I have seen resumes that regurgitate the thesaurus blindly. Clearly these job applicants don’t realize that hiring managers don’t have the time to haul out their Funk & Wagnalls to figure out exactly what they’re trying to say.

More often than that, I have seen resumes that are simply too bare-bones.  They use simplistic language, most often the words, “Responsible for….” These clients don’t understand that hiring managers also don’t have the time to infer the great expertise hidden behind simple, bland language.

The chatty and unfocused share one quality with the terse and uncommunicative: They have not addressed the needs of a hiring manager who is looking to fill a position, starting by inviting candidates based on specific qualifications. They make the recruiter work, and, believe me, the recruiter does not want to work to figure out whether a candidate is the right one. If he or she has any doubts, I have no doubt that bad resumes go into the “do not call for interview” pile.

Your professional resume writer, on the other hand, knows words. Specifically, she knows resume words. She knows the words that will shake the recruiter out of complacency, causing him to pick up the phone and schedule an interview.

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