Re: using a slogan on a resume

Subject: Re: using a slogan on a resume
From: Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 17 Jan 2003 11:14:09 -0800


kcronin -at- daleen -dot- com wrote:

How literally do you mean the word "slogan?"

Do you mean something like this? "Keith Cronin: Documentation that tastes
great, but is less filling"

Or are you talking about a 1-2 line summary of your skills, like this?
"Keith Cronin: More than a decade of professional writing experience,
including software manuals, sales proposals, and marketing publications."

More like the first. I'd call the second is a personal statement or objective. I already have one of those.

Obviously, you wouldn't use a slogan as cheesy as my example, but actual
slogans by their very nature do tend to be cheesy. "Documentation for the
21st Century." "Good doc, on time." etc.
Like everything else, a good resume slogan should be suited to its audience. Resume readers are looking for hard facts, so "Documentation for the 21st Century" would be a poor slogan because it doesn't say much. "Good docs, on time" would be better, but, having put that at the top of the resume, you had better have a list of achievements that validate that claim., or the slogan would work against you.

In any marketing, the goal shouldn't be empty hype, but to focus attention on strengths that you can prove. A slogan on a resume would be no different.


Not cool, in my opinion. Okay for
a *company* but not for an individual person.

Why not for an individual? A couple of people have privately expressed a similar viewpoint. One said that a resume is a marketing document that shouldn't look like a marketing document. Yet many contractors are incorporated, or at least registered as a sole proprietorship, so they are a business. The idea would be more unusual for someone who regularly takes full-time jobs, but maybe the very fact that it's unusual would count in its favor. After all, the point of a resume is to be noticed - notice favorably, that is.

I don't know what I think on these opinions. I'm just playing devil's advocate here.

--

Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7177
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
-G. K. Chesterton.




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