Resumés and.... Can it be?... Cover Letters

Résumes are no fun. Unlike essays, where one can at the very least wax humorous to entertain the teacher (who might then entertain a higher grade), resumés are cut and dried and without anything that makes humanity human. Yes, there is something to be gained from the quick list of facts about someone's achievements, his education and priorities and what he thinks was most important for any particular job fishing attempt. However, there is nothing there more than facts. What is the applicant leaving out? What is he not telling the hiring manager through the screen of the resumé template (so very helpful, by the way, if my mac would work with the free Microsoft Word ones. Alas. Ho-hum.)? Resumés de-humanize a job. I think that if I land a job, it will be on my own presence, my own charisma (rather, bravado and perhaps a very, very, very, very happy schlapped-on sugar-rush face).

No, like the Romans, America prefers the hard, cold facts. We are the engineers of the modern world, and we can know from black-and-white (errr....alphabet-on-parchment?) who the best employee would be. (I'll leave my Americans-are-the-new-Romans-therefore-we-are-screwed post for later.)

The ironic brother of the resumé is the cover letter. The unsaid corporate rules tell us applicants to tell them factually everything important about ourselves in grammatically incorrect fragments (resumés = gag-ness for grammarians), and then ask us to put the same information into prose and make it interesting for them to see before they really see it. Which document do they really look at? The one they have to read or the one they only have to glance at? The cover letter gives the impression that one has a chance to show the facts or flair that would make an applicant stand out in an hiring manager's mind, but that too has an austere form. I would laugh at this reality except that it is reality, and I'm stuck in it.

In neither the resumé nor the cover letter do I see an opportunity to communicate what kind of employee I truly could be. Corporation––I have nothing against it; I am a capitalist––is too distant now, I think. Bring the jobs back here, then choose employees in person.

That way, potential fantastic workers won't be turned aside because they might have failed the Burger King personality test (*ehem*).