A comedic look at job search and success – “What Color is Your Parachute” meets “This Is Spinal Tap,” if you will. This combination of comedy and advice gives helpful tips to anyone who is searching for a job, or hoping to hold on to the one they have. Topics include contemplating your navel to find your life’s work, idiot-proofing your job search, online disasters, strategic schmoozing, resume do’s and don’ts, interviewing horrors and how to handle them, how to hold on to your job, reflections on bizarre jobs, and weird work stories.
Archive for the ‘Resumes’ Category
Coming Soon — “What Color is Your Straitjacket?”
Posted: 09/17/2010 in ResumesTags: careers, comedy, employment, humor, job search, qualifications, resume, skills
Here is an excerpt from What Color is Your Straitjacket? A Pocket Guide to Getting and Keeping a Job Without Going Wacko, soon to be available as an e-book.
Resumes — The Good, the Bad and the Ridiculous
Your resume needs to demonstrate your skills and how they can assist an organization in achieving their wet dreams. Here is a sample:
BEELZEBUB SATANOSKY
145 Fire Avenue, Underworld Village, TX
666-666-6666 reallyreallybad@aol.com
SKILLS
· Branding
· Speaking in tongues
· Recruiting politicians
· Creating and using torture devices
· Stoking fires
· Turning into a black pillar of smoke and killing people
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
· Initiated red and black as a fashion statement
· Generated fear in otherwise rational humans
· Developed torture management system, resulting in 95% torture rate
· Successfully bargained with former U.S. leaders to f*ck up the country
PROFESSIONAL HISTORY
President, Washington, D.C. 2000-2008
· Almost singlehandedly flushed an entire nation down the toilet
· Pretended to look for bad-ass weapons
· Vacationed
· Developed strategy for invading all countries starting with “I”
· Successfully maintained focus on golf game during national crises
· Delegated intellectually challenging tasks
· Mangled the English language, causing linguists throughout the world
to cringe in horror
· Waited for retroactive popularity to kick in
Senator, Washington, D.C. 1947-1957
· Created lists of thinking people and arrested them
· Encouraged grownups to tattle on each other to get out of trouble
· Caused massive unemployment among aforementioned thinking people
· Threw liberals in jail
EDUCATION
B.S. in Pitchfork Probing, University of Torture
More Stuff to Leave Off Your Resume
Posted: 07/28/2010 in ResumesTags: careers, comedy, employment, humor, job search, resume, unemployment
In my “Top Ten Items to Leave Off Your Resume” post, I included, well, 
items to leave off your resume. Here are some more:
- Spelling and grammatical errors – yes, we know you’re an engineer and not a writer. Big whoop. It still won’t help you. Get someone who IS a good writer to proofread. Better yet, two or three someones.
- Photos or graphics – even if you look like Brad Pitt, employers don’t want to see your picture on your resume unless you are, in fact, applying for an acting or modeling gig. If you’re not, they’ll just think you’re goofy. Same goes for images or symbols of any kind. Even if you’re a graphic artist – employers will want separate samples of your work, rather than artwork on the resume itself.
- Objective – The worst ones are the totally noncommittal statements that are so general they say absolutely nothing. “Seeking a challenging position that allows me to use my skills.” What skills are those? Your skills at bullshit? Not that those skills don’t come in handy. Chances are, though, you’re not going for a job as a fortune-teller, so don’t expect employers to read your mind. Even if you get more specific, employers need to see more of an emphasis on what you can do for them, rather than what you want. Guess what? They don’t really care what you want. At least not before they know and love you. Don’t take it personally.
- Lies – employers can expose them pretty damn easily. And it won’t be pretty.
- Referring to yourself in the third person – Talk about goofy. It looks like either a. someone else wrote your entire resume, which doesn’t look too good, b. you have multiple-personality disorder, or c. you have a Seinfeld fixation.
- Trite, so-over phrases sure to make employers gag, such as:
– “people person” – do people really still throw that one out into the
job-o-sphere?
– “results-oriented professional” – anyone can say that about
themselves.
– “organized” – ditto.
– “excellent communication skills” – double ditto.
– “team player” – unless you actually play for the Red Sox. But then,
if you do I’m guessing you wouldn’t need a resume.
– “quick learner and multitasker who thinks outside the box” – how
many cliches can we toss into one bullet?
The main thing is – show, don’t tell. Give vivid, concrete examples of the above, rather than stating them like they’re the Gospel According to Saint Job Seeker.
Keep Your Resume Out of the Bottomless Pit
Posted: 07/13/2010 in ResumesTags: careers, comedy, cover letter, employer, employment, humor, job search, networking, resume, targeted resume
I cautioned in an earlier post against spewing your resume. Beyond not spewing to any and every employer, you also don’t want to be the obedient little jobseeker and just trot out all your info online for the HR pod people. Trot, trot.
No, you want to make a list of places you’d give your big toe to work for, hunt around online to find the contact info for the manager/director of whatever department makes sense in terms of your field, hunt around some more to find info on the company’s goals, problems, etc., and then contact the aforementioned person to let them know how you, with your many superpowers, can help them banish the beast.
Notice I didn’t say send your resume to that person only if you see a job posted that you’re interested in. You actually have a better shot if there isn’t one. Yep, that’s what I said. If there is a job posted, everyone within a hundred miles will crawl out from under their rock to send their resume for that one job. But if you send the superpower letter for a possible opportunity that would be a fit, you can ask to set up an informational meeting to discuss the above further, without asking that person to interview you for a particular position.
Why would you want to bother, if there isn’t a job listed in which you’re interested? Well, there may very well be a job that became available ten minutes ago, that hasn’t been posted yet. Or someone is about to give notice next week. Or maybe the person who updates their website is sitting with his finger up his ass.
How do you find the manager’s name and other relevant company info? LinkedIn, baby. Do a search for the company. Also, Google the company name and the position you’re looking to connect to a person, and you can usually find it. Use your network (of course, you have one. Don’t you???) to see if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows what you need to know.
By the way, when I say “superpowers,” you know I don’t mean it literally, right? It’s much more effective to show a prospective employer how your experience and talents match what they need, rather than brag about how great you are. How great you are will come out anyway, but in a much more real way. Just like with sex, it usually works out better in the long run if you don’t fake it.
Top Ten Items to Leave Off Your Resume
Posted: 07/06/2010 in ResumesTags: careers, comedy, employer, employment, humor, job search, jobs, resume, skills
Here are some that come to mind – more in a later post….
1. How many times you’ve been married…or divorced, or engaged, or dumped, or been on a really bad date…you get the idea. Anything related to your love life doesn’t belong on your resume.
2. Your abilities as a contortionist. Unless, of course, you’re applying for jobs with the circus, or are interested in becoming a porn star. Otherwise, bizarro skills that have nothing whatsoever to do with the jobs you’re targeting have no business on your resume.
3. God-related activities. If you’re not applying for a god-related position (i.e., minister, mausoleum tour guide, Pope-in-training), don’t include your religious activities on your resume. Too much potential for discrimination.
4. High-school graduation dates. Especially if you graduated when Barry Manilow was popular. Generally, it’s not a good idea to invite age discrimination. Same goes for dates of college graduation and, of course, your actual date of birth, for the same reason.
5. Elementary school info. Nobody cares.
6. Your ethnicity. I sincerely hope you already knew that, but if you didn’t, there it is.
7. Hobbies. Again, nobody cares.
8. Volunteer work for potentially controversial organizations, especially ones that label you a racist and/or sexist asshole. So if you’re the Vice President of the Society for White Male Supremacists With Hair, keep it to yourself.
9. Jobs you had when you were jailbait. No one cares about your camp counselor experience at Lake Winnesprocket when you were 15. And if you were 15 when Jimmy Carter was President, that goes double for you.
10. “References will be furnished upon request.” Of course they will. If an employer requests references and you tell her to go screw herself, a job offer won’t likely be forthcoming.
Don’t Spew Your Resume
Posted: 06/14/2010 in ResumesTags: comedy, cover letter, employer, employment, humor, job search, qualifications, resume, targeted resume
In my job, I see many resumes from desperate job seekers who seem to think the resume spew approach will land them interviews, in much the same way lottery-players think that, even though the odds of their winning are something like one in 10,000, they actually have a shot.
In case you have no idea what the resume spew approach is, it’s the dubious method of job search that consists of spewing your resume out all over the place, to any job you think you may have a chance in hell at.
Usually the resume spew doesn’t include a resume that emphasizes the skills and experience that match what the employer’s looking for, or a cover letter targeted to the specific employer(s) you’re sending it to, telling them how you can help them solve their problems with your talents and experience, much less who they are and why you’re interested in them, as opposed to the other 99 companies to which you spewed your resume. Mostly it doesn’t even reflect jobs or companies that are even remotely a match with your background.
Guess what? The spew doesn’t work. Employers want to know why you’re interested in them, and how you can help them. They don’t want to know that you just found them on the first page of monster.com because their company name starts with “A,” and that you couldn’t give a crap about them specifically. Giving a crap is one of the main things employers look for (more about that in a later post). When you spew, you just piss employers off. Not exactly your goal when you’re looking for a job.
Laurie Holman: Comedy Writer, Copywriter, Chocolate Connoisseur 