Are Resumes Outdated?

I’ll be completely honest, I hate reading through resumes, and I dislike the concept and the message it brings across. Resumes are documents meant to demonstrate one’s ability, skills, and past experience. There are books, presentations and workshops built on various theories of how to display those qualities in such a way that you can grab the attention of an employer. Resume’s today became more concentrated on layout, limiting vocabulary and outlandish theories that it completely misses the most important aspect, the individual.

Most would agree that the standard length of a resume should be limited to a page; there were some instances when I received two pages.  How is one expected to display their qualities, skills and experience in one to two pages? Check your most recent resume, does your experience section truly reflect what you did at your previous job? In most cases, it shouldn’t. You aren’t writing a paragraph, your displaying 5 bullet points at most. Lets face it, you were probably so caught up in syntax and vocabulary when writing those bullets that you completely limited your experience.

How does your academic section look? Does it truly display what you accomplished and learned in school? I think it’s ridiculous that some employers factor in GPA. Those of us that have been in college are aware of the various professors that we come across. Some professors are easy, some are hard, some give out A’s very easily and some don’t believe in giving A’s at all. In my opinion, School is great but telling me you graduated with an MBA or a BA from some college really doesn’t tell me much.

Resumes are too outdated, and they don’t reflect the real attributes that employers need to see. When I’m speaking to a prospective employee of SocialBrand, I don’t want to see a resume, and I don’t care what school they graduated from or with what GPA, I want to see the individual. I want to know what the individual is about, what they can do, what they have a passion for and how they can contribute. Would you rather hire someone straight out of college with little or no experience or someone who never graduated college but has a passion and believes in what they do and truly has talent. I think the answer is apparent.

I’ll end off with a pretty awesome video that I found floating around: