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Another View of Resume Critiques
Mar 2 2009
If someone gives you resume advice while referring to a detailed checklist of common resume mistakes, are you being deceived?
Job-search guru Nick Corcodilos thinks so. A recent post on his Ask the Headhunter blog skewers free resume critiques as “the new career-industry racket.” But his outrage fails to stand up to examination.
Corcodilos has made a career out of riding the high horse, exposing a long list of career-related services and practices he claims exploit job-seekers, employers or both. His critique of resume critiques typifies his style.
Instead of the customized, professional advice you might have expected, “a monkey copied and pasted your resume critique into an e-mail and sent it off to you,” Corcodilos writes. He explains that an unnamed “major resume-writing mill” gives its consultants a “multi-page crib sheet” to use when reviewing resumes sent in by an unsuspecting public. Drawing a parallel with a crooked mechanic who diagnoses bogus problems that car owners then pay him to “repair,” Corcodilos labels the free critiques a tool to hoodwink job-seekers into springing for a full resume overhaul, which of course is not free.
Where's the Beef?
There's just one problem: the detailed information he provides in a related article on Ask the Headhunter's main Web site, simply fails to justify all the invective.
Among other things, Corcodilos presumes that free critiques alone can’t alert job-seekers to real resume problems. He seems to feel that just because the advice is based on a template, it must be wrong.
I read the complete text of the so-called crib sheet, which was appended to the longer article on Ask the Headhunter's main site. I found nothing objectionable about its content. indeed, just about everything in the document strikes me as valid, useful and substantial. Many of its points spotlighted subtle mistakes that successful financial professionals can and regularly do fall into, judging from the many resumes we see at eFinancialCareers.
Finally, I have to ask: What is this obsession Corcodilos has with “crib sheets” and “monkeys”? Aren’t scripts (a.k.a. crib sheets) a standard tool in all kinds of business? He seems to feel any script is inherently deceptive, regardless of context. For my part, I’ve always felt they are ethically neutral. Working off a script could be acceptable or not, depending on the particular purpose, the quality of the script, and the quality of the people working from that script.
Corcodilos has been publishing Ask the Headhunter since 1995, making him one of the earliest career-advice bloggers around. He sports awesome writing talent and a solid understanding of the tools of the journalism trade. In this instance, however, there's a yawning gap between the outrage he displays and the facts he unearths.
I assume you are supporting businesses that sell resume services, so you can't see the validity of his anger. I imagine most services exploit job seekers anxieties, but provide little in the way of editing that a good internet search couldn't replicate.
igoeja 03 Mar 2009
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