Out of the frying pan...

...into the fire.

I have a job interview on Monday.

Isn't it strange how you lose your job hunting skills when you haven't used them for a while? I swear ta gawd...it gave me a case of the hot squirts (thanks to

Jimbo

, that's become one of my favorite phrases) just doing a damn resume and filling out the 6-page application.

And, loooord...do I hate doing resumes! I don't even know what the resume...etiquitte is now...or if there even is one. And do employers really read the damn things in the first place? I'm guessing that most don't, especially if there's a big, long application already. I mean...a resume is like...redundant. All the information an employer really needs is on one or the other. Why be forced to do both? I've never understood that.

I suppose, though, a real resume is supposed to paint you in glowing terms, right? You're supposed to merchandise yourself in a resume. As far as I'm concerned, that's what the interview is for. You can say anything you like in a resume about yourself, but if you have no more personality than a hedgehog it's not really gonna do you much good, is it?

And resumes are just a great place to use all those trendy catchphrases and power verbs, aren't they?

Instead of "thought about it", you say "aggressively analyzed" or conceptualized.

Instead of saying you did something "on the cheap", you say you "cost effectively created".

Helped someone else do something? Heavens NO! You "facilitated" or "fostered".

Innovated, integrated, introduced, marketed, orchestrated, renegotiated, streamlined, accelerated....

The list goes on and on. BAH!

As far as I'm concerned it's just substituting fancy words for substance.

I'm tellin ya right now...if I was an employer, the first thing I'd do is throw out every single resume that used a word like "conceptualized". Yea, ok. They can spell...or use a thesaurus. But can they do the job?

The funny thing is, in all my years of working and/or job hunting, I've very rarely not gotten a job that I really wanted. I've gotten a few that I didn't really want, too.

And I never...ever...used the word "conceptualized" in a resume.