The Cringe-Free Job Search

I got a call from a woman who said, "I love to work, but I can't keep doing what you have to do to get a job." I thought of online applications and goofy honesty tests, but that's not what she meant. "I just can't sell myself to the degree that seems to be necessary," she sighed.

"Tell me what you've been doing," I said.

"Well," she began,

"I was advised to write a resume that gushes about how smart and capable and well-spoken I am. That made me gag, right there. Then I was advised to write letters talking about how I'm an out-of-the-box thinker and a strategic visionary. It's too much for me. I write this dross and I have to look at myself in the mirror. Plus, it's not working."

"Lookit!" I exclaimed.

"I'm talking to you right now. You didn't pick up the phone and say 'Listen Liz, I'm smart as a whip.' But you are -- it's obvious."

"Well," she said in the most plainspoken way,

"I ran a $27 million division of a global company up until recently. I don't know if I'm smart or not, but we were profitable and our customers liked us. Our employees liked us. Everyone liked us except the parent company, who decided we were too small to bother with."

"And that is your job-search message," I told her.

"That's it. You don't have to describe yourself as smart or strategic or visionary or lactose-intolerant or anything else. You told the story in about eight seconds. You had a big job, and you rocked at it. You did it once, and you could do it again."

"I've been running stuff for years," she said wearily.

"I love working, like I said. I just hate writing yeah-for-me letters that make me cringe as I write them."

"That's because you have a sturdy gut and a functioning gag reflex," I told her.

"That sell-yourself advice is all over the place. I see resumes every day that trumpet the multi-dimensional high-altitude troubleshooting abilities and superior cross-functional collaboration-facilitation skills of their owners.

People write the craziest stuff in their resumes. I don't blame them; other people tell them to do it. They end up not sounding non-human. They sound like robots, and boring, self-important robots at that."

"Plus, I'm cringing and I'm not getting calls," she said.

We jumped into action. We wrote a new resume for her using human language. We reminded her of her career story, which springs from the craziest place (who she is -- imagine!) She used the plainspoken human approach, and she got a good job.

"My faith is restored," she said.

"Your faith in the job market?" I wondered.

"No," she said, "my faith that smart business people will find other smart people and hire them, if you take the stupid filters away."

"I still want to know how you could have doubted your gut for so long," I said.

"There's a lot of job-search dogma out there," she told me. "'You have to say this, you have to do that.' Sounds idiotic, but you figure 'Well, a job search must not be like regular life.'

But it is -- thank goodness.