Should my resume be boring?
Found yet another post from Mr. Godin that has me thinking. It's short, so I'll post the whole thing here...
Take a look at just about any industry with many competitors--colleges, hotels, sedans, accounting firms (especially accounting firms)...
The websites bend over backwards to be just like all the others. You can't identify one hotel website from another if you delete the name of the hotel (unless there's a beach or a snow-capped mountain in the background).
Sometimes, we try so hard to fit in we give consumers no choice but to seek out the cheapest. After all, if everything is the same, why not buy what's cheap and close?
How about a site that says, "Here's why we're different." And means it.
(Easy to read this and nod your head, but... what's your resume look like?)
I haven't been actively job searching for a while now, and maybe that's why my resume is still just an evolution from the standard foundation I started with in undergrad. I could jazz it up, make it more creative and more particular to me, and I do love the idea...but I wonder...how would the people who see it (i.e. your average HR employee) take my new, custom format? Would they find it charming or pretentious? Endearing or arrogant? I'm at a point in life where I've realized that my personality/skill sets aren't ones that make general people generally comfortable, so for me, it's not that big a risk...but what about your average worker that wants an average job and normal career path?
Admittedly, Seth Godin's writings probably aren't geared toward the excessively normal person, but it's a question worth asking.
