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Full disclosure: I am a little frustrated but I am not judging by any means. It’s OK. My resume sucked too.

Photo by Emma Matthews on Unsplash

If you are using a guideline for resumes such as the ones provided by Cheeky Scientist, you need to remember the following:

Customize, customize, customize for the particular occasion

I know Cheeky says to do two-page resumes for PhDs. Doesn’t matter. If the person referring you say to do a one-page resume, you do a one-page resume.

How often do you find someone ready to refer you? So, when you DO find someone ready to refer you, you kinda need to pay attention to what they are specifically requesting.

It’s not HR, it’s a technical person referring you

Cheeky does a really good job reminding people that you should write resumes that are understandable by non-experts such as people in Human Resources.

That’s great EXCEPT when you are skipping the step that involves HR and going to the top of the stack with a referral from a technical person on the inside.

Now, do not get me wrong. Please still write a professional resume like what Cheeky teaches. Just keep in mind that now your audience is different.

You CAN be more technical. You CAN include your RELEVANT publications. I am not saying publications are required but you do not have to hide them.

Make your education and work experience readable in TWO SECONDS

Do NOT make me read a page of all the wonderful things you have learned on Coursera and Udacity before I can find what the heck your degree is in and when it was conferred. Same goes for work experience. Make it findable and readable FAST. No offense and no exceptions.

I swear I have nothing against personal development and learning, quite the opposite, but life after school is more about what you can do and less about self-improvement projects.

Work experience is important. If you have a job, put it up top. I want to know IMMEDIATELY what your current job is. What do you do for a living right now? Say it and say it FAST.

I don’t care if you are currently unemployed, but I do care if you make me figure that out. 

I am sure you have great reasons for being unemployed. I would not judge negatively for one second, just don’t make my life harder.

Say it, just say you are currently unemployed or make it obvious by putting dates for your last job. You should be putting dates for everything anyway.

If you want to include a brief summary at the top, go ahead. Personally, I wouldn’t read much more than a one-sentence summary.

A bunch of bullets on yourself as a way to ‘summarize’ yourself is just a lot to go through and is NOT the information I am looking for. 

The information that I want RIGHT AWAY when I have a resume in my hands is what did they go to school for, when did they graduate and with what degree, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, what is their current job. I don’t care whether you put education first and then work experience or the other way around. If I have to scroll to page 2 of 2 to learn any of these things about you, the result is no referral and a blog post like this one.

If you do not have work experience, that’s fine.

Just don’t even think about doing two pages. It should be one page and that is totally fine. Put your education, relevant skills, volunteer work, unpaid internships, and anything else that is relevant to the position/company/keywords you are applying for.

Don’t tell me about the skills that are not relevant. If you mention more than four or five skills relevant to the keywords, I probably won’t read ANY of them. Just being honest.

I know Cheeky says to put hobbies, but I personally do not care whether you like baking or not. If you want, you can put it in, but if you need to save space, cut it.

The thing to remember with putting ANY information in is that it’s not about you, it’s about your audience.

Put in what you think will be of value to THEM. Do you KNOW that the other person or the person higher up who will review your resume also likes baking? Then put it in. It’s all about making a connection, for sure.

Most importantly, it’s about making it easier for the other person to evaluate whether you are a good fit, and how and where exactly you can fit into the company or the specific team that is hiring.

If you THINK you have no work experience, think again.

You probably do. Don’t worry about it being glamorous enough or not. People ARE interested in your work experience, whatever that is. If your work experience is ‘Graduate research and teaching associate’ or ‘Postdoctoral researcher’ at blah blah school, put that. If it’s ‘Server’ or ‘Cashier’ at blah blah restaurant or department store, put that. Be real. Make your work experience totally obvious and immediately readable.

I would consider relevant unpaid internships ‘work experience’ as well. Not that I think unpaid internships should be a thing at all. But I would be more than understanding if you told me that you do/did cool stuff where you gained relevant experience, but unfortunately, did not get paid for it. Because I have BEEN there!

But again, the key is to focus and customize for the particular opportunity. Or make a real effort to spin things in a way that makes your experience feel relevant, focused, and MEANT for the particular opportunity. It’s pretty obvious when you are sending a generic resume and referrals are not for the generic. Referrals are for serious candidates.

Companies really care about finding out whether you are really interested or not, whether you really care or not. Because time is money and we don’t want to waste money. So, I would pay close attention to the specific information that is requested by the person referring you, focus on providing that information, follow through, and forget about other more general things for the time being.

Again, it’s a technical person…

It’s not explicitly in the job description of technical people to find new talent for the company. It’s a helpful thing if they do it, and they are usually rewarded with a referral bonus. The point is that it is most definitely an EXTRA thing that they most certainly do NOT have to do. Most people, in fact, don’t bother with it.

So, you want to keep that in mind and make it EASY for the person to refer you. If you don’t make it easy, they probably won’t do it. If you don’t do a good job with your resume, they are not going to feel comfortable enough to pass it along. It’s that simple and nothing personal.

All the best and share any questions/comments below.

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