A Silicon Valley engineer and manager posted a very interesting piece on how he reads resumes. While written about the programming community, it's likely that many of these sage tidbits are relevant and applicable to churches and ministries, as well-- after all, the context he describes (receiving 50-60 or more resumes for a job) is quite similar in many cases.
One point of note out of this article is his summary of what he doesn't look at during the first pass over a resume: Objective, Skills, and Summary of Qualifications. He comments:
"Unlike Skills, which I find to be a total waste of time, I will go back to Summary of Qualifications if we end up talking. When you write "Established track record for delivering measurable results under tight schedules", I am going to ask you what the hell you mean on the phone and if your answer isn't instant and insightful, I'll know your qualifications are designed to be buzzword compliant and don't actually define your qualifications."He also discusses the "second pass" and goes on to offer a handful of very helpful tips about how to improve your resume.
[His post has excited quite a few comments, some of them disagreeing with good points-- but I think he's more on than off on this one.]
If you're looking to improve your resume, you might take a look at LifeClever's "Seven Deadly Sins of Resume Design"-- which would be funny if it weren't so sad. Please, please do not do this, folks!
Once you've had a look at that train-wreck, jump over to "Give Your Resume a Face-Lift" (also from LifeClever). One thing I became wholly convinced of in my time teaching rhetoric is how important visual presentation is (more on this in another post), and this guide will walk you through cleaning up and improving presentation.
Okay, now mash all of the four different resume posts together, and you should have a resume that is hard to beat.
[By the way, I DO plan to provide the promised guide to preparing your Data Form-- very soon.]
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