Tackling the Resume with “Expert Resumes”

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A long-standing item on my to-do list is re-writing my resume.  It’s horribly outdated, I know I need to do it, and yet, I have put it off over and over again.  I fear it.  And I probably wouldn’t fear it so much if I hadn’t read Expert Resumes for People Returning to Work by Wendy Enelow and Louise Kursmark.

Writing a resume used to be so easy.  A reverse chronological listing of your work experience.  But it’s not that easy any more.  Resumes, like most things it seems, have changed in the time I’ve been out of the work force.  Now they need to be creative, energetic, and snazzy.  The forward-looking “career objective” has been displaced by a sharply-written “career summary.”  And there’s a debate over whether to even include dates.

For guidance, I turned to Enelow’s and Kursmark’s Expert Resume book.  It is, indeed, full of helpful information.  It is also rather daunting and even, at times, overwhelming.  I’ve read, and re-read, the first three chapters three times.  I’ve highlighted.  I’ve taken notes.  Today I even typed up those notes to organize and make better sense of them.  And I feel like I’m just beginning to grasp what I need to do.

Over the next few days, I’ll blog my way through those notes.  If I end up forging my own career path and developing this fledgling video production business, then re-writing my resume may be a waste of time.  And yet, I believe that if I follow Enelow’s and Kursmark’s advice and sell myself instead of list my employment experience, I’ll have some useful building blocks for marketing materials.  So I shall forge ahead.