I’ve read and admired Charles Miller’s writing for a long time, and I know he is roughly a million times smarter than I am, but I think all his latest blog post proves is that people look for different things in a resume.  For instance one of the links Charles lists has brevity and factual information as important, whereas another says an in-depth history is key and personal hooks are differentiators.

I’ve read a whole lot of bad resumes over the years, and probably written some average ones myself, but the best I can come away with from all that reading and writing is guessing that a resume will likely be skimmed quickly, and that you need to interpret why you believe you would fit the job description.  I don’t believe facts alone can do that for you – there needs to be the personal input as well.  So Rands in Repose: A Glimpse and a Hook is the most accurate for me – but trying to guess how others read resumes is a tricky thing to do.