This week, I received the news telling me about LinkedIn’s Resume Assistant. At first, it didn’t bother me, but after a while, I returned to it. On one level I thought such a tool might be great for people starting their careers but then again not since you are basically copying what others have expressed. On another level, this makes me wonder about some bigger questions:
- If you want to be unique and stand out from the crowd, using a template for resumes will probably not help you land your dream job since you will be hard to separate from others. You will just sound like all others in your field. Instead, I suggest you engage in what Anders Ericsson calls ‘deliberate practice’ meaning you will be so darn good that recruiters will contact you for that reason. Share your work from that practice, and people will recognize you.
- The best recruiters are probably using far better methods to find unique talents, than just getting matches on LinkedIn searches. The best recruiters don’t care if you have all the exact words and expressions on your resume. Instead, they will notice you since you are good at sharing your knowledge from all your deliberate practice. If a recruiter contacts me, I would much rather hear that they do so since I seem awesome at what I do, rather than my resume matching their LinkedIn search.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with having an excellent resume. But the main value of the resume does not lie in the exact words you use to describe yourself. The main value lies in performing the hard work that needs to be done to reach excellence and then sharing that excellence through LinkedIn and other forums.
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
