Stopping Sending Me Your Resume
Photo by SOCIALisBETTER
I have a friend who has been out of work for almost two years. He’s been trying to find a job in the film industry, but has been completely unsuccessful.
According to my friend, he’s got a lot of leads, but is now just waiting for productions to end, organizations to get things in order, and that big director to give him a call.
Every time I talk to him he has yet another list of things he’s done to try and find a job. But month after month he has the same list of excuses for why he has yet to find a job in the film and television industry.
What is that excuse exactly?
“It’s that my fault”
According to my friend, “Times are bad. The economy is in a lurch. The actors are on strike. No one is looking to hire. They’re looking to hire, but not right now…” and a million other excuses.
The one thing I never hear my friend say is “Maybe it’s me?”
Because the sad fact is, IT IS my friend’s fault that he doesn’t have a job. The economy, the timing, and the people he approaches are not to blame. The truth is, my friend either doesn’t have the skills to cut it in the industry… or he isn’t presenting himself in a way that makes a big film and TV companies want to hire him.
“But I’ve been sending out hundreds of resumes” my friend says to me.
“And that’s your problem!” I shout back at him. “Resumes don’t work anymore!”
It used to be that polishing your resume was what it took to land your dream job. But a nice, clean, polished resume doesn’t work anymore. In fact, the most successful people in the world DON’T HAVE RESUMES… and if you want a job, neither should you!
You would think that having a resume is vital to landing a job because it tells your employer exactly what skills you have and what functions you can perform. But in reality, most resumes do the exact opposite. Instead of telling your employer what you do, they tell your employer exactly what you can’t do. They limit you. The confine you. They put you in a box.
The new generation of successful creatives can’t be defined on paper… and they know it! And because they know it, they don’t even try. It’s not worth their time.
Instead, the new generation of creatives rely on their work to land gig after gig. The new generation of creatives use their website as a resume, or their work on the recent TV show, or their collaboration with P. Diddy. Their work shows exactly what they’re capable of.
Successful people don’t need resumes because they’re too busy being a success to sit down and write out exactly what skills and abilities they have. Only those who are struggling to succeed have the time to sit around and write out their list of abilities and fit it all on an 8.5×11″ piece of resume paper.
Get it? Good! Now stop sending out your resume!
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[...] week I posted an article about how traditional resumes no longer cut it in the job hunting world. Resumes, as I explained, no longer tell an employer what you can do, they [...]