25.3.08

Putting the resumé on a diet

In my last post, which was  total downer (sorry about that!), I wrote: 
It's easy to be frustrated that there's no one who'll just read your damn resumé and a sample script already. Wouldn't that be nice?
The very next day, a very good friend* sent me word of a rather rare position being faintly advertised. All of a sudden, I could just send my damn resumé with the vague hope of it not being immediately deleted, cast aside, or spat upon.

This business continues to surprise me.

Of course, having to send off my resumé for what amounts to an assistant position opened a whole new can of beetles. (If worms can come in cans, why can't beetles? They're black and crunchy and fun. Not like worms at all.)

It took me about three hours to successfully un-pad my resumé** (which I'm going to call a CV from now on, so live with it). Not that my CV was padded before. All the experience on there was legit. But it was not the kind of CV that screamed "I'm perfect for your assistant role!" It was more like, "I'm perfect for your Senior Information Architect or Web Producer role", with a side of "I'm also excellent if you need some great copy written". 

So I cleaned out the whole dang thing, de-emphasizing experience in such things as creating Interactive TV applications, and emphasizing my ability to type. Really fast. I also added in a TV Writing Accomplishments section, in which I listed my one competition almost-win and the specs I've written thus far. I don't know if they'll care, but it seemed like a good idea. It shows that I'm not just a dreamer, that I'm actually working toward my goal.

It's unlikely I'll ever hear anything back from them. I mean, hey, I'd hire me, but they probably have 1,000 emails in their inbox right now. Still, for some reason, just being in the running for a decent starter job has me feeling 100 times better.

*Yep, it's still all about who you know.
**Do you Americans use the accent aigu in that word, or do you just hope people are smart enough not to think you're sending them your 'start again after a pause or interruption'?

Artery cloggery
Does hot honey-lemon-ginger homemade tea count? That's about all I've been consuming, since this miserable cold refuses to die.

3 comments:

Tim W. said...

I would be surprised if most Americans would even know what an accent aigu is. And I noticed that you wrote that you upset about jPod getting cancelled. I watched 15 minutes of it and couldn't watch any more. Maybe it improved, but it just seemed so cliched and it being Canadian made me cringe even more. Of course, I tried to watch the first episode of Friends (I don't think I finished), left the country for a year and was shocked to come back and discover it had become a huge hit. What I watched was AWFUL. It improved vastly over the first episode.

Tim W. said...

Oh, I forgot. Good luck.

Josh said...

Half the battle of getting these jobs is just knowing about them, so go, go, go!