Managing the Imperfect Resume

From the Wall Street Journal

Mr.
Crehan spent the last eight years as a senior vice president at Lehman
Brothers Holdings in the ratings advisory group and left his position
in March 2008. Previously, he was a director at S&P. He earned an
M.B.A. from Babson College in 1982. Mr. Crehan lives in Fairfield,
Conn. with his wife. He has two children.

Plenty
of people these days claim to have created a template for the perfect
resume. Many of us have received guidance from outplacement services,
books, friends in human resources, or via online resources. While there
is no one, set model for a successful resume (meaning, one that will
get actually get read and kick off the interview process), most people
do know what not to do when crafting this important document.

I have tried to absorb all the advice out there. There are certainly
debates about some aspects of the resume format. For example, I was
told not to include school graduation dates. The thought behind that
advice was, especially for someone who was born during the Eisenhower
administration, doing so might send out a red flag to hiring managers.
Yet others say - and I agree - that employers can usually come close to
figuring out an applicant's age, so why play games and delay the
inevitable?

This past week I had another important resume revelation via a phone
conversation with a search firm. I had reached out to this recruiter
because of an introduction by a friend and former colleague. In this
case the recruiter hit home the value of constantly tailoring a resume.
He told me my resume lacked several key, descriptive terms that would
have triggered the firm's computer search engine to flag my resume.
Since you can pretty much tailor your resume to almost any job posting
(something I do not do all the time), his point was a valid one.

If the position in question was for someone to do risk or
counterparty analysis, and if my resume did not mention these words, I
am left to the mercy of the human element. This seems to be especially
true when dealing with large firms who receive large volumes of
resumes. I could be the perfect candidate for a job opening, but
without these key word matches I need to be lucky enough to have a pair
of eyes look at my resume and realize that I might be an attractive -
or even an obvious - candidate.

His advice hit a nerve and I will try to be more attentive to the ‘actionable' language in future job listings.

Readers, how do you massage various versions of your resume to get them closer to perfect?