What a Resume Really Is: A Story

Resumes box us in, and this can feel uncomfortable. How are we supposed to communicate all the complex and nuanced reasons we’d be great at a job on one piece of paper?

The untrained eye will scan a resume and look for landmarks that give some sort of differentiation: the name of a city evokes a place; the name of a fancy school communicates excellence; something slightly unusual - a language, a training, a name-droppable boss. All these details do one powerful thing: they tell a story. Our brains are hardwired for storytelling: humans look for patterns in abstract data to construct meaning. A resume is a set of data from which we infer a story.

A trained eye, such as someone who works in HR and wades through hundreds - if not thousands - of resumes, is scanning for a specific story. They may be looking for a precise skillset, a caliber of training, something that says “good team player” or long-term sticking-power. The truth is, you’ll never know what that specific hiring person is looking for. The specific story they are scouting for is determined by a myriad of mutable factors: leadership pressure, company culture, budget, team dynamics, legacy left by whoever did that job before, that person’s bandwidth and emotional state of being at the precise moment of opening your doc. Whether they had a fight with their spouse before they arrived at the computer, etc.

Ok, so you can’t control their story. But you can shape yours. In doing so, you have the opportunity to intercept whatever narrative the person hiring you has in their head. A good story commands attention, clarifies energy, and creates feeling. What’s your Story to tell?