The Perils of Generic Résumés

Every so often, I get a client who insists that they want a generic résumé that they can use to apply for any job. A typical conversation will go something like, “I think I might want to try sales, but there is a teaching opening at the local college, and ABC Company is looking for an Operations Manager, so can you create a résumé that I can use to apply for all of the them?”

The image that springs to mind is those 1970’s style low budget commercials that promise the latest and greatest gadget can do all things for all people. I’m not sure how many gadgets actually got sold, but I do know that trying to use a generic résumé is a fast-track strategy to ensuring that your candidacy never gets serious consideration.

The short answer I give my clients is “no”, but the longer answer is “no, not in good conscience”. It is, of course, possible to create a generic résumé, and recruiters see hundreds of them on a daily basis. In fact, one HR professional admitted to me in a sardonic moment that she loved receiving generic résumés because it made her job so much easier. She was faced with the daunting task of pre-screening 750 résumés for sales positions, and was able to instantly dismiss 550 of them because they did not clearly demonstrate the candidate’s strengths or career focus on sales. How long did it take her to judge that? Less than three seconds of “eye time” per résumé. If the top half of the first page didn’t shout sales, nothing else in the résumé even got a look-over.

Does this mean that you have to create a completely individualized résumé for every job application? As a general rule, no, although at a minimum you should ensure that the “career target” in your résumé closely matches the title of the target job. By knowing the psychology of how résumés get read, you can concentrate your efforts on fine-tuning those sections of your résumé that make the difference between generic and job-specific, which can have an enormous impact on how much “eye time” your résumé will get.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 22nd, 2009 at 11:07 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.