tell your story

As I noted previously, the best way to approach your resume is to view it as creating a story.  When you view it as a story, you can both craft it so you can easily convince people to hire you, but also it's just a lot more enjoyable.

Any good story has parts; introductions, beginning, endings, climaxes, etc.  Your resume has its own components that tell your story.  We'll look at these parts so you can get an idea of how to tweak them to tell the kind of story you want.

So, we'll take a look at the parts of your resume-story.  I'll present them in the order I recommend they appear on the resume.  Each has a specific purpose in telling your story.

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When it's time to write a resume – indeed when it's time to do a job search – you want to tell the story of your career to potential employers, in a way that gets you the job.

This is the "arty" part of resume writing and though it's a way to make resume writing far more interesting, it can be as difficult as any artistic effort.  You may have trouble starting – or stopping.  You may get writer's block, or not be sure what to include.

Either way, work on telling your story.

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In general people don't like to do resumes.  I'm sure for a good 90% of my audience this is not a revelation, but a confirmation.  People just don't enjoy the whole resume thing – something I encounter all the time.

Part of this is because of the stress of the job search, I'm sure.  However, another factor is that I think people haven't really found a way to "get into" doing a resume.  The resume is a barrier, the resume is an annoyance, the resume is a chore.

I think that resumes can actually be fun.  If you enjoy them, you'll do better at them.

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