Last week Working Girl’s U.S. News post on “50 Buzzwords You Shouldn’t Use On Your Resume” was picked up by Yahoo.  Over 2,400 readers commented.  Most of them were not happy.

“Don’t tell us what not to say, tell us what to say!” they said.

A fair critique, and thus this week’s post, “The Most Powerful Words to Use on Your Resume,” was born.  However, if you check it out, you’ll see it’s not just a list of words and phrases. 

That would be too easy.

Sad but true: Figuring out what not to do is a lot simpler than figuring out what to do.  You can write a so-so resume in a few days.  A week at the outside. 

It takes much more time–plus ingenuity, research, knowledge, sweat, and maybe tears–to write a great one.  Your resume won’t sound or look like anyone else’s, because you don’t sound or look like anyone else.  It can be a useful tool, it may help to jumpstart the process, to look at “sample resumes. “  But creating your own is more than just following a template. 

There are no shortcuts.  It would be nice if there were.  But, no.  Sorry.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 24th, 2010 at 12:56 pm and is filed under job hunting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. both comments and pings are currently closed.