Dave’s Diary: The Resume of the Future
Friday, May 20th, 2011
What will the resume of the future look like? Considering how many other things have changed in the world of career development, it’s kind of surprising to me that many of the conventions that apply to resumes and cover letters seem to be alive and well.
That’s not to say that some things haven’t changed. In fact, those same conventions are often what makes an otherwise great application seem dull, generic, and lifeless – and the successful applicants are often those who step outside the ordinary and come up with something unique. However, I would imagine the core of what a resume actually contains today hasn’t changed much from the time your parents were graduating from university.
As a group, job seekers are currently dealing with a transition that’s neither simple nor comforting. The current generation of graduating students, for example, is having to come to grips with the fact that the messages about career development they’ve been getting all along from parents, the education system, and society at large, are ill suited to what they’re actually going through, and reflective of a time in the past when things were different. Coming up with a plan, and implementing that plan on a nice, linear path towards career X just doesn’t work for the vast majority of people. Instead, they find themselves thrown into a chaotic system in which their great plan, if they even have one, has little to no value, and may in fact be limiting their range of career possibilities. (more…)