Pore over everything in my C.V.
But you’ll still know nothin’ bout me
You’ll still know nothin’ bout me
If Sting were a New Yorker instead of an Englishman in New York, his fellow Yankees would have thought that he was referring to a long document containing a thorough summary of his qualifications used by professors when applying for an academic post. Before moving on to a more lucrative career as a celebrity rockstar, he used to be a teacher after all; and not only in New York but throughout almost all of North America, the term “C.V.”, which is Latin for “Curriculum Vitae” (the course of one’s life), is employed as a long list of a professor’s qualifications and publication list. For almost all other industry sectors (save for celebrity musicians), however, North Americans curiously use the French term “résumé”, which derives from the French verb “résumer” (“to summarize”), whereas most Francophones interestingly opt for the Latin phrase “C.V.”.
But linguistic differences are not the only characteristics that distinguish an American C.V., sorry, résumé, from a European C.V., and some of these other differences could very well cost some job applicants from outside the US an employment offer.
Should you include a photo on your résumé?
One such difference is the self-portrait photograph. While it is obligatory for documents of identity, it may seem logical, even normal, for Europeans to include one on a résumé if for anything else to confirm at least one’s own identity to a prospective employer. In the US, however, many employers in fact discourage photographs on résumés in order to insure - as best as a company can - that the applicant for an interview has not been rejected (or accepted) because of her or his physical appearance, including age, gender, and race. It is also for this reason that many American employers equally discourage including information regarding one’s age, race, gender, or religion on a résumé. To those outside the US, some of these measures may seem ineffective since surly one can infer the age and gender at least from the dates and the name on an applicant’s résumé. Nevertheless, like tipping, these customs are ingrained in American culture. The only exception to the rule in the American job market is for jobs like modeling or acting, which may require an applicant to have certain physical features. The increasing popularity and dominance of Linkedin, however, have indeed influenced such peculiarly American attitudes toward hiring due to the platform’s wide use of profile photographs. As an American company, the availability and popularity of such features on its platform may seem contradictory to ……………
Yet despite the wide-spread use of profile photographs on Linkedin, there is still another argument in favor of disregarding a self-portrait on one’s résumé: real estate. Just like geographical real estate, the area on a sheet of paper is scarce and thus valuable. In a recent interview for Linkedin News, Graham Riley, CEO of CareerToolBox, an American résumé service provider, pointed out that “[t]here is only a certain amount of real estate on a resume,” and that since recruiters spend an average of less than seven seconds skimming and scanning a résumé, it seems profligate to waste such valuable real estate on a photograph rather than on more details of an applicant’s experience and skills relevant to the job.
The real purpose of a résumé: Getting the interview, not the job
That recruiters decide on whether or not to invite an applicant in for an interview in mere seconds reinforces the aphorism by the American, Benjamin Franklin (who incidentally is on the American one-hundred dollar bill), that time is money. Applicants, particularly young and inexperienced ones, should keep this aphorism in mind when composing their résumés and understand that the real goal of a résumé may not be what they think it is.
While most applicants believe that the purpose of sending a résumé is to receive an employment offer, this is not necessarily the case at first. Hear me out: Applying for a job is a lot like dating and marriage: a marriage proposition almost never precedes an invitation for a date. The same holds true for a job offer: it almost never precedes the interview. An invitation for an interview is thus the goal of the résumé. At the interview, the goal then elevates to procuring a job offer. This distinction is crucial, because there is a tendency for young applicants to feel the need to write what seems to some (namely prospective employers) like an autobiography to compensate for their perceived, relative lack of professional experience. Since a recruiter spends merely seconds on an applicant’s résumé, she or he is far less likely to read a résumé longer than a page, especially if it is from a current undergraduate or from a recent graduate.
How to write a CV and a résumé
The judicious and economic use of the real estate on a résumé as well can assist with its reading speed, and therefore with its effectiveness. Just like geographical real estate, not all areas of the document are equal: some areas of the document are like prime real estate with an ocean view while others are clearly not. Since Americans and most others who use the Roman alphabet read from left to right, and from up to down, the higher area of the résumé is more valuable than that of the lower, and the left hand margin is more so than the right hand one. Therefore, job-seekers should strategically place the information with the most benefit to the job for which they are applying at the top of their résumés rather than at the bottom, and as close to the left than to the right. An impressive accomplishment like “ * Promoted as the youngest VP in the history of the firm”, for instance, would almost certainly provide the prospective company with more beneficial experience and skills than would, say, “* Assisted with the filing and organization of documents.”, and would thus have a more favorable impact for the job-seeker by being placed towards the top of the résumé.
Note too not only the use of bullet points for rapid reading, but that each one begins immediately with a powerful verb that reflects a skill that is essential, unique, or at least relevant to the position to which the job-seeker is applying. By positioning such a valuable skill as the first word the reader (since English - and many other languages - reads from left to right) will encounter, the job-seeker greatly increases the chances that the target-audience will encounter the intended message and thus, one hopes, continue reading; but even if the reader does not continue reading on, such strategic placement of key words nevertheless increases the odds that at least the intended message will have been read by the target-audience.
Finally, the consistent assignment of the use of each font to a certain category on the résumé facilitates the rapid acquisition of the intended messages. For instance, if the categories of the résumé, the names of the work and educational institutions, and the job and academic titles each have a particular use of font applied to them consistently, the reader then associates that use of font with its intended category on the résumé, allowing her or him to quickly skim and jump from one category to another when searching for a specific piece of information about the candidate.
While many of these practices can and are applied to résumés outside of North America, avoiding following these rules when applying to an American company runs the risk of being seen as an Englishman in New York.