I recently presented the “Fearless” approach to Job Searching to a group of 20 Career Resource Managers for post secondary institutions. To be honest, it was the scariest presentation I have ever given about unemployed students for 2 reason:

1. These are advice giving professionals, many with 10+ years of experience and
2. These people are very proud about what they do and fiercely protective of their methods.

As usual, we spent a lot of time discussing resume’s and more specifically profiles and summaries. As you can imagine, many of them challenged me on my view that profiles and summaries ONLY INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING ELIMINATED and keep you unemployed, and do not help you get an interview.

What I want you to understand is that over selling your experience, education skills, whatever – is BAD!  being over qualified or over educated will get you eliminated as quickly as being under educated or experienced.  In my experience, the over 40and unemployed crowd are the worst offenders of this.  All of this life and work experience and not enough paper to write it on.  here is some inspiration for you, Is age just a number in your career?

I see people trying to put EVERYTHING they have ever done, trying to summarize every possible skill and piece of education on their resume.  So much information that it is HIDING THE RIGHT INFORMATION, the information a hiring manager NEEDS to see to proceed with the screening of your resume. You can read more about that in RESUME FORMAT 101 – ANATOMY OF RESUME SCREENING.

But at the end of the day, here are the facts about profiles and summaries and how they actually hurt your chances of getting interviews and keep you unemployed.

• the initial screener’s of your resume DO NOT read your profile and summary, they only look at your education and/or experience.
• if a hiring manager does read your profile/summary (and 90%+ of the time they don’t) and they don’t like what they read – THEY WILL ELIMINATE YOU = Unemployed.
• hiring managers don’t agree on what is a good or bad profile/summary. So no matter how good your profile/summary is, 50% of hiring managers won’t like it and eliminate you!
• I have never met a hiring manager who said they would eliminate you for NOT including a profile/summary on your resume.

Let me put the above facts in a different context for you. if you had $10,000 to invest and I offered you 2 stocks to invest in.
Stock A had a 50% chance to double to $20k and the worst thing that could happen is you would keep you $10k – you couldn’t lose a penny.
Stock B also had a 50% chance to double to 20K BUT had a 50% chance that you could LOSE IT ALL.
Which stock would you invest in? Stock A, right? Well, you just chose the resume with NO profile/summary. Good upside with little risk. While a resume with a profile/summary has the exact same upside, but it does have the chance to go to zero = EXTRA RISK.

Why gamble with your ability to get hired or stay unemployed, provide for yourself, your family and your future? When you can take steps to minimize the risk and increase your chances of getting interviews.

Start challenging what isn’t working in your job search by asking “is it helping me get hired or helping me get eliminated?”  If it is helping you get eliminated, it’s helping you stay unemployed – stop doing it, NOW!