I’ve received a quar­ter of a mil­lion résumés in my career. I’ve read 25,000 of them. (Give or take a wig­gle.)

That many? Yes, so now, you can make a few assump­tions about me: (a) I’ve held numer­ous hir­ing posi­tions, (b) I’ve been a recruiter and/or staffer, © I have been or still am an exec­u­tive coach and advi­sor to C‑level offi­cers on down, and to com­pa­nies in, oh, 25 indus­tries, (d) I have been or still am a career coach, (e) My career must be longer than 50 years, maybe even past 55, and (f) I must have gained some per­spec­tive and wis­dom over the decades, if only just a lit­tle.

All six assump­tions are cor­rect – and that should explain things. So I’ve come to be referred to as an expert in many areas. But that term – expert – makes me ner­vous. At best, I might be a know-it-all.

The difference between an expert and a know-it-all

You see, an expert knows it all; a know-it-all thinks he’s an ex pert. Like I said…

Be that as it may, there are a few things I can tell you – and why it’s so inter­minably b‑o-r-i-n‑g.

First: What, actually, is a résumé?

Too many peo­ple think a résumé is a career his­to­ry – and then go on to write a biog­ra­phy. That’s strike three on the first pitch. A résumé, plain and sim­ple, is a com­mu­ni­ca­tion device, and what it must com­mu­ni­cate is what part in the read­er’s future you will play.

Readability

No mat­ter what your résumé says, it’s got to be read­able: sim­ple lan­guage, short sen­tences, and – in the words of leg­endary career advi­sor Juani­ta Turn­er – “Clear, Con­cise, and Com­pelling.” This is no place for elo­quence. What’s your mes­sage?

Pointless, Endless, Hopeless

If that’s the case, there’s a lot of heat and lit­tle light. Bul­let points with job descrip­tions (“Respon­si­ble for”) are killers; accom­plish­ments rule. Lengthy bul­let points – or, worse, para­graphs – bury what lit­tle mes­sage may be there. Any­thing that’s point­less, end­less, or hope­less would do a lot more good if you just tossed it. Remem­ber: read­abil­i­ty.

You need a big opening number

For one, your résumé does­n’t come alive at the begin­ning. A pow­er­ful sum­ma­ry or pro­file announces to the read­er what’s ahead, like a talk show host does with “Ladies and gen­tle­men, my next guest is…” It cap­tures – and holds – the read­er’s atten­tion – and dri­ves the read­er down the page. This should tell you why – or at least one rea­son – you’re not get­ting the calls you were hop­ing for or count­ing on.

Are résumés still relevant?

In our age of Appli­cant Track­ing Sys­tems (ATS) and online net­work­ing (LinkedIn), there’s a grow­ing sen­ti­ment that asks, “Who needs résumés, any­way?” And that gets fol­lowed by silli­ness like this: “I just have to jam as many key words as pos­si­ble so that the ATS selects me over the thou­sands of oth­ers.” (As if those oth­ers haven’t thought of that, too.) So aside from the fact that you’ve just pro­duced a poor­ly-writ­ten piece, you’ve prob­a­bly done it in a small, hard-to-read font – like Ari­al Nar­row 10 point – to fit all those extra key words, of course.

Human eyeballs, finally

Soon­er or lat­er, though, your résumé has to get in front of a human – a think­ing, feel­ing, judg­men­tal human. Now what? Your bor­ing résumé is now exposed for what it is: bor­ing. And that, 99% of the time, is the end of the line.

Time and mon­ey spent at the begin­ning of the process pays off soon­er or lat­er, usu­al­ly soon­er.