One of my clients, a new one, was concerned about taking a job and failing in it because it would be a “stretch” for him; it was something he wanted to do and had some background for, but not something he’d already done for any length of time. I suggested that, if he “failed” at the job, he could simply omit it on his next resume and forget he’d ever held it.

He didn’t feel he could do that, he said, because it would be lying. Later, however, when we were discussing his resume, he told me he’d omitted his first job out of school because “it didn’t seem to apply.”

I found this to be ironic, and pointed it out to him: “You’re OK with dropping a job at the bottom of your resume, but not at the top,” I said. “Is that it?”

He stumbled around a bit verbally, and didn’t have a good answer.

Not uncommon, actually.

The confusion, or, more properly, the incongruity of having one set of values for one situation and another for a different situation is pretty common, in my experience.

All of this can be summed up nicely by understanding that a resume is not – repeat, not -- a factual account of your life’s experiences; it’s a selling document. It must be written and designed and everything in it structured to “sell” you so that the end result, if you’ve submitted it in response to a job listing, is that you’re called by the employer for an interview. Those who think otherwise are merely playing by an outmoded set of rules and will suffer the consequences.

Now, having said that, I want to state publicly that said resume must not (a) contain any lies and (b) must correspond in some fashion -- and this point may be debated until you’re blue in the face -- with your life/work experiences.

The bottom line is: You must be comfortable with what you have written on your resume.

If you’re not, then it won’t serve you well.

When I work with clients on their resumes, my thrust is to portray them in the most favorable light. It is unabashedly slanted to do this. I never encourage them to discuss their failures, weak points, difficulties with their prior jobs, bad performance reviews. Such information has NO place in your resume.

As an example, I’ve often said, “Do you expect the manufacturer to say, ‘This is the best model car we’ve ever built. It will go from 0-60 mph in 6 seconds. Ithas genuine leather seats. However, it has a tendency to over-steer and the engine and transmission have been known to give out at 76,000 miles’?”

That’s a laughable example but exactly what I’ve heard, in similar terms, from people I’ve begun working with about their career experiences.

The ethics of this may be debatable.

But, if any of this offends you, I’m willing to bet, on the employers’ side, that they won’t tell you that the V.P. who will be your boss’ boss is an SOB, and they’re in deep do-do for their next quarter’s earnings, or that the job they’re offering has no authority and all the responsibility, or, furthermore, that the job was made up of two previous jobs and you’re expected to do both of them.

If, for example, you have a gap or a bad experience when you were fired from a job or something similar, it requires a “work around.” That is, something that presents what happened in the most favorable light. A common approach is to have been a consultant, self-employed, for a period of time that fills the gap.

The thing I’m talking about here is being positive and showing yourself in the most positive light.

The best example of this is similar to what a well-known battery manufacturer said, Our batteries have nine lives. (This meant that even though they gave out at the worst possible moment, perhaps when you least expected it, yet after that, when said batteries weren’t used for a while, they had some residual power.)

So, as part of making your resume a Killer resume, make sure that it’s as positive a document as possible.

Job positioning

Transferrable vanilla

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