EXPERIENCE: You type “character traits” into Google, thinking resourceful would fit perfectly in your résumé, and come across www.professional-resume-example.com, a website that helps with résumé writing by providing a word bank of key character traits to mention. Examples include “reliable,” “efficient,” and “resourceful.” Unfortunately, such vocabulary pools offer a short-lived remedy to your growing unease concerning how to articulate yourself.
First, you realize every other person attempting to persuade that he or she is unique also fishes from the same pool. Plus, most people suppose every word on the list applies to them – just as drivers, no matter what their age or how many tickets they may have, are all positive they’re good drivers. So, of course you are dependable, organized, and sincere.
Second, there’s a difference between showing what makes you you in actions and expressing such in concrete words. We are not versed in the vocabulary of selling ourselves. Can you mention you are outspoken, or will it act as a flag to employers that you may cause trouble? After getting to bed at the same time for a week, can you list time management as one of your skills? However, if you’re going to stand out, you have to move into the right language.
It’s not easy to be perfect. But you believe you can manage to sound so on a résumé. Now, how do you get Mr. Reader to believe too? Especially when you’re bulleting overused words which strip meaning from the nuances of your life? And this is where anxiety makes another appearance. By listing words, you’re either letting the words do too much work, perhaps aiming for the reader to make assumptions about how they apply to your experience, or losing both the complexity and the subtlety of your character in those approximately eight italicized letters.
§ Thomson and Thomson, law firm 6/08-9/08
o Implemented organizational system
o Communicated work summaries daily
o Translation: You did what you were told, filing papers into the correct cabinets as you gossiped with your fellow interns about how the law students were handling the stresses, usually via Facebook chat.
§ The Garden at Springfield, a retirement home 5/09-present
o Waitstaff, managed a section during shifts
o Translation: You have endured the unthinkable: waiting tables exclusively for the elderly. While developing the patience of a saint amidst cranky demands for decaf tea and complaints that you forgot their butt-pillows, you’ve come closer to dealing with the physicalities of aging and the mental struggles with death than most people.
In these two examples, you’ve left almost all of your reality unstated. Whether manipulating the reader’s imagination or understating the effect an experience has played in your life, a résumé never captures who you are. Instead, at the center of a résumé lies a constructed persona. We build résumés, and though we can’t rely on heritage to get us somewhere, Schloesser notes, “Even if you don’t think about it consciously, when you write your résumé, you’re establishing your lineage.” In other words, as you sit down to write, you have to show what exactly you’ve done with that blank slate.
As such, in today’s society, a résumé is an account of what you’ve accomplished rather than who you are related to. In his book Status Anxiety, Alain de Botton makes up the following newspaper headlines for well-known literary characters:
Othello: Love-Crazed Immigrant Kills Senator’s Daughter
Oedipus the King: Royal in Incest Shocker
Madame Bovary: Shopaholic Adulteress Swallows Arsenic after Credit Fraud
He follows up by noting that these headlines “[seem] incongruous… because we are used to thinking of the subjects to which they refer as being inherently complex and naturally deserving of a solemn and respectful attitude.” So, when we are boiled down in a résumé – making headlines for ourselves – the self evaporates, leaving behind an induction certificate, a lab coat, or a company, not necessarily misleading, yet far from the depth presenting who you are deserves.
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