I was reading over a friends resume and was somewhat jealous of some of the lines used. great eye catching stuff. One thing I have faced in the past few years---since 2001--has been my resume ending up on massive piles of competition.
So I am always looking for something that helps it catch attention and get a looksee--what good is experience if its matched by a long list of similiar experience from others.

Proven ability to react fluidly to changing priorities,is a favorite of mine.


what do ya got?

My resume itself is strictly data-oriented: employers, dates, and job descriptions. It's my cover letters that tend to add the more descriptive lines. I usually include something like "Demonstrated ability to work within budgets and to deadlines" - and have occasionally added "despite intervention from management".

18 years of working with hostile personalities and difficult behaviors- and the patients could be quite bad too.

Wow, sorry I missed this topic originally, lets see if this bump gets things rolling.

For me, I am not a fan of cover letters. I start my resume with a fairly detailed "objective" section that I think makes a cover letter unnecessary.

Then I detail work experience. My typical approach is to go into great detail on my current / last job, and just go with a line or two on others, unless there is something particularly special I want to highlight.

I then have a military experience section. I follow with education and training I have relating to the job(s) I am seeking and I follow with a list of organizations I am a member of. I like to add political organizations (like my membership in CATO) as I would rather not get a job because of my politics, then have my politics discovered later and loose a job that I have come to count on.

The area I place alot of importance on is the "Additional Comments" section at the end of my resume. There I add a few things of interest. Like the fact that I am a trained SCUBA diver (who knows, someone might have a wire project that needs that), that I have various emergency training certs like CPR and the like. I also use it to explain that the 6 month gap in my resume was by choice and due to an extensive rehab of a house I did that became my family home. I mention the rehab of my mother's home now as well. This allows me to let them know I know my way around electrical wiring even though I have no license or formal civilian training in the subject.

But there is one thing. "My best line" I would imagine, that I have ended every resume with for years (though I added to it after a job with a "snake-oil type firm). I have received alot of positive feed back on it (of course most of my jobs have been in the security industry at one end or the other).

The final paragraph in my resume:



I believe that this paragraph alone is responsible for my being selected for at least 2 jobs in my past.

One interesting note. I tried something new this time around. I added graphics to my resume. Weird I know. But I worked graphics of the various systems and equipment I can work on and install, into my resume. This was the first thing my current boss commented on when he interviewed me (in a positive fashion). He mentioned it again right before he offered me the position.

I am sure there are some companies that might look down on doing something like that, but in this case it worked for me, and this is 1000 times the best job I ever had in all areas (though I have made more in the past, I have never been happier).

One thing I like about my resume is that it mentions the importance I place of family, it mentions the organizations I volunteer with, it touches on my political beliefs and it shows I am more then just a series of jobs. As a result, along with things I work into interviews, my employer knows before they even offer me the job that I am political, an active volunteer and above all, my family will always come first. No surprises for them, and no unpleasant conflicts for me.

I got in at MCI in 1993 due to one acronym in my resume: DFDSS.

That had to do with mainframe disk drives, back when they were the size of top-opening freezers designed to hold a side of beef. Now you can hold way more data on a smart card, but the side of beef has remained the same size.

Today I'm not worrying about what's on the resume any longer. Finding a job requires three things: The job has to be available, you must fit the requirements, and the hiring person has to like you.

Jobs aren't all that available around here unless you have security clearance, and I'm too old anyway. Three strikes, yer out!

However, and I just got a clear picture of this from an article in AARP magazine, after one passes the age of 50, a major change in life is likely coming -- if it didn't arrive a decade earlier. Depends on the individual, but in general, we live longer these days, and that's probably going to continue as a trend.

So what happens when the kids are all grown up and the career evaporates? What do you do for the next 30-50 years?

One of the guys in the article said that the first 50 years of life is a waste of time from the viewpoint of the individual. You're continually trying to fit into somebody else's mold, and if you are like me, you've had a lot of trouble squeezing into those little boxes.

About four years ago, I did a little exercise to figure out where to go next, and what I came up with was a bourbon-drinking, motorcycle riding writer of progressive fiction and non-fiction articles and books. Oh great, I thought, that means I won't be making doodly squat for years. Since then, I did get an 18-month paying contract in my old field, but that too evaporated.

But during this contract, I never gave up trying to work another way of making a living. As a result, I'm better situated for writing and playing music (another one of those starvation period things).

Here's the thing: Before 50, you do what others want you to do for relatively easy money. Most don't run off to be a best-selling novelist or rock star. You have to have a special craziness to pursue those career tracks in the younger years. But in later years, the challenge comes back to be who you were born to be, not somebody else's idea of what you need to become.

Back when the average life expectancy was around 47, this wasn't much of a problem. Today, as the average life span bumps the 80-year level, it is.

So my best resume lines these days are the ones that never get put into the resume, and they are as follows:

"I really don't care what your corporate requirements are. I do care what kinds of books and articles sell these days in the large markets, and the publishers don't care about whether I got Microsoft certified or not. They don't care if the FBI has fine-combed my background. They don't care how old I am, what I do for fun, or if I'll cover the systems 24x7. They also don't care if there are gaps in my work record or if I dress for their idea of success. They just want material that will move, and that's that."

And another little blurb:

"I never really liked you guys. It was all an act forced upon me by your own illusions. I was faking it."

Sure is nice to be over the hill

Personally, I hate the resume format. The narrative format addressing specific Knowledge, Skills and Abilities that most federal agencies and some private-sector employers use these days allow the applicant to more fully address what he or she brings to the table by matching past education and experience to specific employer-identified job skills.

It's also not a bad method for assessing the applicant's writing ability.