Interview411.com lists some "terrific phrases to use on your resume" and I am amused at how standardized they are, and that they believe there is something particularly promising in them. Bioblogging would turn them upside down and inside out by using powerful images combined with deconstructed text to create idea-balloons (the wiggling bait) within which these little jabs and bits of job descriptions/functions & responsibilities would or could be ferreted out later, or elsewhere (say, in a cover letter or email or telephone talk). This sort of same old stuff (SOS) just doesn't work anymore! And to think that intelligent and successful managers or team leaders need to be directed at how to explain the myriad details of what they did everyday (day in/night out) on a resume (which is not the place) is ridiculous, like trying to tell a CFO how to crunch numbers. Below are some brief comments on these phrases and how hackneyed they are, although I must admit, they would have been dynamite 30 years ago!
1. Achieved significant results: That's nice, but isn't that the job?
2. Responsible for the achievement of: Isn't this a rework of the above syntax?
3. Managed multiple responsibilities: Is there a meaningful job above janitor that doesn't call for that?
4. Created new and better: Not sold in any stores? Call 1-800-NOW?
5. Planned and organized: Now here's a new and useful tool, as good as "managed and directed." Killer copy.
6. Increased customer satisfaction: Says who? How about an embedded video of that happy customer!
7. Created organizational efficiencies: Go ahead and say it like a man: chopped heads! Counted beans!
8. Worked effectively with: This is a phrase that is so old it's practically medieval: worked well with dungfarmer.
8. Instrumental to the success of: What, you worked with the philharmonic? Are you a director, or wing leader?
9. Developed and implemented strategies: Now we're getting into the nitty gritty, which won't fit on any resume.
10. Developed solutions: Now I'm getting curious because problems is what most work is about. I like this one.
11. Produced cost savings: Ho hum, wake me up when the power point cranks up and the spreadsheets shout.
12. Introduced quality improvements: Thin ice makes for dainty walking, so be careful dancing here.
13. Promoted teamwork: Well, hells-bells, you'd be crazy not to, aye? I mean, aint this basic?
14. Met challenging deadlines: Ever seen a looming deadline that wasn't? Why do you they call them DEADlines?
15. Managed client expectations: This could be a great anchor for the bioblog's driving image: expectations!!! It could be the entire vehicle for the deconstructed text because this is the most important of all things work-wise, the slippery eel of expectations.
16. Implemented improvements: Blahblahblah. We want to know what kind of person are you, will you be?
18. Successfully faced challenges: Ok, here's your medal or ribbon, you're a survivor: so what!
19. Demonstrated flexibility in: Stop beating around the bush and show us your character: nakedly changeable.
20. Assisted in the coordination of: I know for a fact this might mean something, but this is no way to imply it.
21. Efficiently handled: Congratulations on a job well done; did anybody notice; can you do it for us?
22. Effectively managed: See above; check for minimum requirements before installing.
23. Provided customer-focused support: There's a lot of this going around these days: is it natural for you?
All in all, most of these phrases are socially acceptable in letters, but to clutter up the bait (your bioblog) with such contrivances of "descriptions" (posed as "explanations" which do nothing to imply your future potential) are essentially high school stuff, if not managerially criminal.
I rest my case.
Monday, September 24, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
SOONER IF NOT LATER
While most folks are minimally happy with minimally effective traditional resumes (those chrono-functo-combo confesso-affadavits with the missing stories) there are some in the leading vanguard of highly productive, very talented, graphix-savvy Gen Y crowd that will latch onto bioblogging as revolutionary new-ware for personal branding and communicating creative character at work. As the Italian Futurists in their manifestos were wont to say: there are those who go, and those who stay. Which one are you?
FREE DESIGN! WIRELESS BIOBLOGGING! ACT NOW!
Fast Company's October issue focuses on design and cover just about everything humans drive, wear, live and work in, use and play with. Whatever the particular level that style and design touches--from the shape of our bathtub to the texture of our jackets--we are both consciously and subconsciously aware of its presence, its subtle power . . . and we like it (one reason we pay a premium for it, especially in fashionable necessities like running shoes and water bottles).
There's striking design of blenders, chairs, museums, logos, PCs and countless other "things" that surround us nite an day; and it seems that smart design can and should be applied to everything mundane, in order to promote better use and appreciation of these things, as well as to reduce them to their essential elements: design, then, being first above all a sense of the thing deconstructed to its most functional form, and then gently shaped and colored (or texturized and lit) by the designing artist/engineer to accommodate packaging and other utilitarian factors.
So what about a resume, guy and gal designers? Are these spiritless, story-less reports of Experience, Education and Other not due for a major facelift? I think so, and I believe that if we are to continue to promote our "selves" (our creative characters at work, that is) in these little framed letter of A3 boxes (which is where we keep circling back to no matter what else we do, for the purposes of SOP documentation), then we need to repackage "creativity at work" and "our personae" as design-worthy with strong, alluring images supported by structural content that is sensible and telling.
Good design strips the emotional experience down to the essential essence, and in a bioblog, it's carved away to the simple formula of IMAGE + WORD: my potential + my past. Just as one would market a new brand of a product that can help you save time, effort, energy . . . your bioblog should promote you as a valuable human/working dynamic that is always changing, constantly becoming (better, smarter, savvier, more focused).
You are wireless; you're the thing. You pick up the invisible signals and run with them, based on your Emotion (ok, let's call it your "emotional experience") as well as your WorkWorldWisdom (people learn so much more, tangentially, in the workplace about themselves and the operative habits of others than just skillsets and jobsets and mindsets).
If you really believe in the old categories and that they are still relevant (Education, Experience, Other) then stick with the staid chronological, functional, or 'combo' resume, the fake affadavit and semi-transparent confession (of failure to grapple with the forces at your job). Otherwise, go for the gusto: bioblogging.
Whereas the clumsy old resume is wired to the company's history, their electrical grid of who got what and who got nothing, and is plugged into the network of same-old/same-old job titles (functions as responsibilities, goals as less than personal driven, emotional connections severed by the dysfunctional hierarchial synapses), the more promising bioblog is like getting ready to take a long journey with no specific end in sight, because it is the transformative experience of traveling into your own unfolding future that is the important part, learning and devising and empathasizing as you go, changing directions when you have to. In other words, you aren not buying the spread between what company's say they want/need and what you know (suspect, have heard, think is probably true) what they really will be happy with a year from hire date.
Emotionally savvy biobloggers shape and design their future, starting with the paper or pixelated bioblog. It's a process that says: I know what the future me will look like; I know where I am going; I know how this works.
It's wireless because it's a mutual emotional intelligence shared between you and them that makes the connections keep from scrambling off the page, and makes sense of your story, which of course, has not yet been told because it is not yet over, and is happening in the future like everything else, which is why your bioblog should be designed to paint it rather than try to etch-a-sketch of the (your) past, which is jambled and scrambled up with everyone else's.
There's striking design of blenders, chairs, museums, logos, PCs and countless other "things" that surround us nite an day; and it seems that smart design can and should be applied to everything mundane, in order to promote better use and appreciation of these things, as well as to reduce them to their essential elements: design, then, being first above all a sense of the thing deconstructed to its most functional form, and then gently shaped and colored (or texturized and lit) by the designing artist/engineer to accommodate packaging and other utilitarian factors.
So what about a resume, guy and gal designers? Are these spiritless, story-less reports of Experience, Education and Other not due for a major facelift? I think so, and I believe that if we are to continue to promote our "selves" (our creative characters at work, that is) in these little framed letter of A3 boxes (which is where we keep circling back to no matter what else we do, for the purposes of SOP documentation), then we need to repackage "creativity at work" and "our personae" as design-worthy with strong, alluring images supported by structural content that is sensible and telling.
Good design strips the emotional experience down to the essential essence, and in a bioblog, it's carved away to the simple formula of IMAGE + WORD: my potential + my past. Just as one would market a new brand of a product that can help you save time, effort, energy . . . your bioblog should promote you as a valuable human/working dynamic that is always changing, constantly becoming (better, smarter, savvier, more focused).
You are wireless; you're the thing. You pick up the invisible signals and run with them, based on your Emotion (ok, let's call it your "emotional experience") as well as your WorkWorldWisdom (people learn so much more, tangentially, in the workplace about themselves and the operative habits of others than just skillsets and jobsets and mindsets).
If you really believe in the old categories and that they are still relevant (Education, Experience, Other) then stick with the staid chronological, functional, or 'combo' resume, the fake affadavit and semi-transparent confession (of failure to grapple with the forces at your job). Otherwise, go for the gusto: bioblogging.
Whereas the clumsy old resume is wired to the company's history, their electrical grid of who got what and who got nothing, and is plugged into the network of same-old/same-old job titles (functions as responsibilities, goals as less than personal driven, emotional connections severed by the dysfunctional hierarchial synapses), the more promising bioblog is like getting ready to take a long journey with no specific end in sight, because it is the transformative experience of traveling into your own unfolding future that is the important part, learning and devising and empathasizing as you go, changing directions when you have to. In other words, you aren not buying the spread between what company's say they want/need and what you know (suspect, have heard, think is probably true) what they really will be happy with a year from hire date.
Emotionally savvy biobloggers shape and design their future, starting with the paper or pixelated bioblog. It's a process that says: I know what the future me will look like; I know where I am going; I know how this works.
It's wireless because it's a mutual emotional intelligence shared between you and them that makes the connections keep from scrambling off the page, and makes sense of your story, which of course, has not yet been told because it is not yet over, and is happening in the future like everything else, which is why your bioblog should be designed to paint it rather than try to etch-a-sketch of the (your) past, which is jambled and scrambled up with everyone else's.
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