The Importance of Keeping Up

I did a "new" resume today.

I've crafted and revised my resume over 30 years of hard work; job after job, place after place, experience after experience. It's hard to cram that down to less than 4 pages, but I'm kind of PROUD of those 4 pages! They represent years of toil and sweat; of good situations and bad; good bosses and bad; great offices and tiny cubicles and phones from Western Electric 565's to Siemens Optisets that do everything but burp you; manual, handwritten files to fully electronic (paperless) files; reporting traditions that stretched back over 150 years to Crystal Reports emailed to interested parties.

I'm proud of my 4 pages. In discussions with my friends (of the same age), they all feel the same way and have the same 4 pages.

Well, throw that all out the window. Nobody has time to read all that, and nobody wants to see all that. The new thing is a "skillset" resume, in which you B.S. your way through the things you know how to do. You then have the 4-pager to back up the employment history, IF anybody cares enough to look at it. Mostly they don't.

We were always taught to write well, in complete sentences. Now all they want is "bullet points". Eliminate everything but the essential. Make if snappy.

So employers are gauging my THIRTY YEARS of experience and knowledge and ability based on 3 or 4 bullet points on a single sheet of paper.

Somewhat disillusioning.

But hey! Upward and onward! I loves me some bullet points!