According to a Reuters/Herald News/PC World/Washington Post poll 20% of current committed relationships began online. 40 million people say they have tried online dating. Not only do I know several married couples who began their relationship online – but I met my dear husband online myself. This isn’t an advertisement for online dating, although I highly recommend it for busy professionals. This is, however, a gathering of lessons I’ve been musing over for some time now that I learned from the online dating experience. I propose that if you approach your résumé in a similar way that you approach online courtship you can achieve enviable results. I also propose that the majority of job seekers miss this principle.
In a dating profile you do two things. One – you tell others about yourself in a way that is engaging and inviting. Two – you paint a picture of the ideal person you want to be with. A successful dating profile is specific and relevant. It shows confidence, and it paints a clear picture of why you are the ideal match for the soon to be love of your life.
I read a very insightful blog post at by eFlirtexpert that gives a cheat sheet on how to write a killer online dating profile. Verbatim- it mentions many of the tips and tools I share with job seekers as a career consultant. For example:
“Show, don’t Tell” – My adage is actually “SELL, don’t tell”, but the advice I have for résumé writing is the same as is given for online daters. Employers, and potential mates are not interested in a list of your positive character traits or skills. We are a culture that is centered around narrative. Instead of saying that you like to travel in your dating profile – you might be better off to share an anecdote about what you’ve learned from experiencing other cultures firsthand. It works the same for a resume. Instead of saying that you have strong communication skills (which is ineffective and overused in resumes anyway), you would grab much more attention by sharing that you were the voice for your company at public outreach events, resulting in increased business and revenue streams. A good dating profile paints an intriguing picture of you as a potential boyfriend/girlfriend. A résumé is no different – except without the romance :)
EFlirtexpert also states that a successful dating profile “Talks about Your Match”. This is probably the single most important lesson that online dating can teach us about building a great résumé. Your résumé is for your potential employer – NOT for you. I’m sure there are tons of accomplishments that you are personally proud of and that you feel are powerful enough to be included in a résumé – but if they aren’t relevant to an employer’s needs, simply put, nobody cares. I don’t mean to be harsh, but there are extremely high level professionals that fail to get selected to even begin the interview phase because they haven’t learned to frame their skills in a way that makes an employer salivate. I am probably most proud of the work I did as a program manager at what I consider to be the best summer camp in the country – but nobody in my current industry gives a hoot about that, so it doesn’t earn a spot on my résumé.
It isn’t just about selecting what to omit from your résumé. It’s also about knowing what to include, and how to phrase it in a way that shows that you are the best candidate for a job. There are some excellent tools that can help you to do this which I will discuss in depth in future posts, but the main thing to remember is that your resume should match directly with specific requirements that an employer is looking for. If employers in your industry crave employees who have seen projects through from concept to completion – your résumé had better describe real instances where you made that happen. Otherwise, you are inviting employers to put you in the dreaded “no” pile.
Now, I consider my résumé writing skills to be pretty sharp, but I have to be honest and say that my dating profile skills were subpar. To prep for this post I logged onto my profile that has been gathering cobwebs for almost four years. I am one lucky girl that my husband found something charming within; I mean I mentioned my cat and used the phrase “the bees knees”, for goodness sakes. Unfortunately, in the professional world you won’t get lucky as I did and have quirkiness save your tail. You have to have a bit more precise and focus, and you have to remember that your goal is to make a match with an employer; not just any employer - but your dream beau/belle of an employer.
Do you think your résumé could use a bit of a dating profile makeover? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
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