Joanna Brown
Whether you’re a seasoned professional looking for a new job or a fresh grad looking for that priceless first job, polishing your résumé on these first, unseasonably warm days of spring is a chore. You make the best of what you’ve got and say a little prayer that it gets into the right hands.
So, too, did Michigan State University junior Joe Adams, who healed his bruised ego by drafting a personal dating résumé. But not even the best practices in business can get this guy a date.
It started as a joke after Adams — who had gathered up all his courage to ask a girl on a date — was rejected. His target declined with some snarky question about whether he had a résumé that she could review.
It was a good thing that his sense of humor was untouched by her rejection, as Joe returned to his room alone and set about drafting a dating résumé in the same format that you or I might organize our professional credentials. He swore he would not be caught empty-handed again.
To start with, his objective as stated on his dating résumé was clear: “To find a honey with [an awesome] family who enjoys sushi, adventure and good movies.” Job sites like The Ladders and Monster agree that if your résumé has an objective, it should be as specific as Adams was when he noted his love for raw seafood.
Continuing on, Adams’s résumé includes the same subtitles as mine: education, work experience and special skills, supplemented by sections itemizing his favorites (the movie Inglourious Bastards; the television series The Office; and a band called The Killers) and moderately interesting things about him, as well as a pie chart of how he spends his time — the academic grind and religious functions take up half of the circle. The vita also includes a photo of Adams with a llama.
Other than the llama photo, Adams’ résumé uses all of the best practices recommended by the Harvard University Extension School. A professor there reminds job seekers that résumés are marketing documents that potential employers will spend no more than seven seconds reviewing. For that reason, job candidates should use action verbs to describe how they added value to each position listed and to quantify information to show the achieved results.
Adams does that in several ways. He details his job as a lubricants consultant (“Not a euphemism”) with the Shell Oil Company, where he worked to decrease production time by 20 percent at a Houston facility. He also uses bar graphs to highlight special skills. He gave himself 100 percent for crying at movies like Marley and Me and about 90 percent for “acting like a dad in public,” but only 20 percent for rollerblading.
Finally, he lists his contact information in the form of social media accounts Instagram and Snapchat — but not Tinder, “because I don’t objectify women.” It’s no wonder that he also lists making great small-talk with parents among his special skills.
“The intent of the résumé was really just to make a joke out of getting denied,” he told Cosmopolitan. “I don’t carry it around with me or hand them out. I wouldn’t want to be known as ‘The résumé guy’ around campus. Ironically, this is now what I’m known [as] …”
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