What Color Is Your Parachute 2018 by Richard N. Bolles copy

Some Friendly Reminders About Your
“Pre-Google Resume”
1. If you’re blanketing the Internet with that resume, be cautious about
including any stuff on the resume that would help someone find out
where you live or work, particularly if you’re a female. No, I’m not
being sexist. It’s just that, sad to say, there are some sick people out
there. Sick in the head, that is. If I were you, I’d be sure to leave out
my address and home phone number. Just an email address should
more than suffice.
2. If you are targeting particular employers, rather than or in addition to
broad job-sites, keep in mind that a resume is best not sent solely by
email, particularly if it’s an attachment, and not embedded in the
body of the email. Many employers, leery of viruses, will not even
open email attachments (and that includes your resume). Send it by
email if you must, but always send a nicer version of it by the postal
service, or UPS, or FedEx, etc.
3. If you’re going to snail-mail a resume to a target employer, pay
attention to the paper you write or print it on. Picture this scenario: an
employer is going through a whole stack of resumes, and on average
he or she is giving each resume about eight seconds of their time
(true: we checked!). Then that resume goes into either a pile we might
call “Forgeddit,” or a pile we might call “Bears further investigation.”
And what determines which pile it goes into? Surprise! It’s the feel of
the paper. Yes, that employer’s first contact with your resume is with
their fingers, assuming this is in a stack of printed resumes (not
digital ones). By the pleasure or displeasure of their fingers, as they
first pick up your resume, they are prejudiced for or against you
before they even start reading. Usually they are blissfully unaware of
this. Anyway, this is why you want the paper to feel good. That
usually means using paper weighing at least 28 pounds (a paper’s
weight is on the outside of every package). And you want it to be
easy to read—so be sure it’s nicely laid out or formatted, using a
decent-sized font, size 12 or even 14, etc.