I found all of the posted articles to be very informative and quite interesting. I actually came out of reading these, thinking to myself that my resume really sucks when I think of it. Fortunately I haven’t needed it in over a year now! I really think the most key point I got out of these readings was to put yourself in the shoes of a recruiter/resume reader. Really this goes back to considering your audience, as we have discussed before.
The most interesting article I read out of these posted resume drafting articles was the “Skeptical Resume Reader Tells How He Really Thinks”. I found it very useful to see behind the curtains of someone who actually reads these things. After reading about half of the article, I thought to myself, ‘Holy crap! My resume sucks’. Now that it occurred to me, I would move right along past my resume. It’s not that I’m not very qualified, it’s just I’m not presenting the data in the right way. Like the writer says, he doesn’t want to deal with reading superfluous pronouns, adjectives and dependent clauses, he just wants to know what you are looking for specifically and why you would be qualified. Come to think of it, I’d be bored to death if I had to read my resume. I suppose it would be appropriate to write in a little more proper manner, so to speak, if you were applying to be a writer or something, but that’s not the case with me. I really found this writers last statements to be quite captivating exclaiming, “Show me how I can use you. Sell me only what you're prepared to deliver. Go ahead, make me an offer I can't refuse.” Really what he’s saying is advertise yourself in the most efficient manner possible. When advertising comes to mind for me, I think about how much research goes marketing analysis. This is absolutely key and needs to be considered at a very deep level in order to be as effective as possible.
I also really enjoyed reading “A Glimpse and a Hook”, and plan to use it as much as possible when writing my new resume draft. I found it very informative on each section outlined in most resumes. I like how the writer outlined what specific questions he asks himself when he’s reading the job history section, such as, “Do your responsibilities match your title? How long were you at your most recent job? If it was a long time, can I get a sense of how you grew? If it was short, can I figure out why you left? Do your last two jobs build on each other? Can I get a sense of where you're headed or are you all over the place?” I really plan on sitting down and addressing each of these questions and trying to answer them myself to see the results I would come up with and if they would be appropriate.
Overall I found all of the articles to be very informative and useful. As I’ve stated before I feel the most key point I will take from this is to put myself in the mind of who will be reading this. I think once I address this, my resume will be much more effective and hopefully advertise who I am, and what I’m looking for better.
Resume Changes
I agree with you, Matt, that after reading these articles I really got the feeling that my current resume sucks! After that thought, I did I quick scroll back in my mind, reviewing all the times I'd handed that thing out or submitted it via the internet, and it really made me wish that I'd had some of this advice before hand. As you mentioned, one of the most important things to take from these articles is the understanding that you should construct your resume as a sales pitch, while closely analyzing the perspective of the potential employer. I think when you do this, you will notice a lot of changes that might be made to improve your resume for the better.
Resume overhaul
I also found myself fixing things on my resume as I read through those articles. Not only was some of my information flat out “useless” to put on a resume but I did not even have matching formatting throughout. I previously knew that the resume should flow well throughout, but for some reason I never really changed it. After looking it over for a while I noticed that some of the bullets didn’t even match. I don’t know how or why I let things like that go past me considering how easy of a fix it was and how it may have influenced my résumé’s ability to win over a recruiter.
New and Improved Resume
Yeah I have not had to update my resume in a year also and it is frustrating a little bit. I guess it is a good idea to update a resume periodically throughout the year. When reading your response I thought that having the jobs in the work experience section build on each other makes a lot of sense. After reading all of the articles, it is confusing on what order to put everything in a resume. It would make sense that a reviewer would look for previous job experience to build on each other though. Hopefully a person would not work for a small company after working for a large company.
Be Careful
I too found "Skeptical Resume Reader Tells How He Really Thinks" to be a very informative article. The author’s blunt statements allowed it to be very effective at teaching readers what recruiters are thinking and doing while going over resumes. One thing you might want to consider is that this was just one recruiter. I would make sure that you don't tailor your resume to just what this author said. Instead read other articles and come up with what you feel is the best strategy for creating an effective resume. This way you hopefully target the different strategies of the recruiters.
Comparing Resume's
One way of judging if your resume is good is to compare it to your peers' resumes. Compare it to the resume of people who are applying for the same kind of jobs in the same industry. Ask them why they wrote certain things and why they omitted other items. If you know what your peers have in their resumes and improve yours, you will not only have a better resume, but also higher confidence which can go a long way.