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

4. A resume should have a purpose, at least in your mind. It might be
that you’re posting it online, just to collect and organize all pertinent
information about yourself in one place, so that when an employer
Googles you they find this, nice and concise, in contrast to all the
other stuff about you that Google will find, scattered all over the
Internet.
5. Your sole purpose, for your resume, if you’re targeting individual
employers, is to get yourself invited in for an interview. Period. This
truth, unfortunately, is not widely known. Most job-hunters (and more
than a few resume writers) assume a resume’s purpose is to “sell
you,” or secure you a job. It does happen. But primarily the purpose
of a resume is just to get invited in for an interview, where it will then
be time for you to sell yourself. In person. Face to face. Not on paper.
So, once written, go back and read over every single sentence in your
resume and evaluate it by this one standard: “Will this item help to
get me invited in? Or will this item seem too puzzling, or off-putting,
or a red flag?” If you doubt a particular sentence will help get you
invited in for an interview, then omit that sentence. If it’s important to
you, give yourself a note to be sure to cover it in the interview. And if
there is something you feel you will ultimately need to explain, or
expand upon, save that explanation also for the interview. Your
resume is, above all, no place for “true confessions.” (“I kind of
botched up, at the end, in that job; that’s why they let me go, as I’m
sure they’ll tell you when you check my references.”) If you want the
interviewer to know that, in the interest of full disclosure, don’t put it
in your resume. Save true confessions for the end of the interview,
and only if you’re confident at that point that they really want you,
and you really want them.
6. The same advice applies to discussing any nonvisible or non-obvious
handicap you may have. Generally speaking—there are exceptions—
don’t mention it as early as the resume. And even when you’re in the
interview, don’t discuss right off the bat what you can’t do. Focus all
their attention, initially, on what you can do—that you can perform
all the tasks required in this job. Save what you can’t do for the
moment when they say they really want you.
7. If you’re coming out of some subculture that has its own language
(e.g., the military, clergy, etc.) get some help in translating your