1000's on Edu, Zero on Marketing

Here is an interesting thought. People spend massive amounts of money, incur thousands of dollars in debt, and invest years of time and energy educating themselves, yet they make little effort and spend no money on the exact thing that will get them a job, their resume. The absurdity is truly perplexing. How and why do people consciously, or unconsciously it appears, make these kind of decisions? I have a few theories to try and explain the unexplainable. By the way, having reviewed hundreds of thousands of resumes, this absolutely applies to you.

Too cheap? Oh, you would be surprised how often this is a factor. Or, maybe it's not always being cheap, but the person has incredibly poor decision making abilities when it comes to monetary priorities. After all, you must be aware that half of the world is incredibly irresponsible in most facets of life, money, parenting, etc. That's not even debatable. If faced with a good night out at the bar with friends, a nice restaurant with the Mrs., a brand spanking new pair of jeans or shoes, or having a professional document prepared that will significantly improve a person's long term economic picture, guess what gets the nod? It's a no-brainer for many. I know, it's amazing, but not surprising how people operate.

Pride and ignorance? Many young, and old, people have the wonderful thought, I'll do it myself. I can surely figure it out. I'll browse around and get some samples and piece it together. It will be fine. How hard can it be. It doesn't make that big of a difference anyway. I'll have my wife look at it. I'll save some money in the process. The rationalization can go on and on and on. Stop. Stop rationalizing and showing your ignorance. I'm thoroughly convinced that mans inherent ability to rationalize, everything and anything, is his biggest downfall.

By your "logic", a company that is selling a product or offering a service in the marketplace, just like you do, should be able to take anyone in the company, let's say IT or Accounting, and have them slap together a marketing brochure, advertisement, or PR announcement that will be highly effectively in a competitive market to sell products and services. It's not happening, no matter how many samples they look at, so don't keep heading down the dead end street that a DIY/homemade resume is appropriate in any business. Companies have entire marketing departments, or they outsource to marketing and ad agencies to prepare these times, because they are intelligent enough to know that this is a crucial step in being successful against other competitors (job seekers).

As you're sitting on the sidelines with your fancy new degree sitting in your sock drawer, or hating life in an irrelevant job from what you studied and spent all of that money on, just remember, you did not finish the job. You thought you did, but you didn't. Preparing yourself is only half of the battle. Now you need to be an expert sales and marketing person and get yourself sold to the highest bidder. That starts with either swallowing your pride, prioritizing your expenditures, or just plain snapping out of the distorted thoughts you have on resumes and job seeking. Time is ticking, and the longer you wait, the harder it's going to be. Stand up and get in the game. If you're sending a resume you put together on your own to employers who you want to pay you money, you're blowing it. I know they didn't teach you this in college, but now you know.

Yes, I am investing time telling you this for my own benefit. I'm busted. As a recruiter, I can't use your crummy resume with my valuable clients, and I'm not going to invest one second of time to fix it. That is your responsibility. If you think I'm tough on resumes, you should see how employers are. The majority of an HR person's time is spent hitting the delete button.