3 ms·

wtf... do ppl write essays on resumes? even 4 pages is too long nowadays. need to tl;dr.

• ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  Well, understand that it is not uncommon where I live to draft a cover letter at least. For government jobs it's even worse, there you basically do have to write essays against the "selection criteria" (don't get me started on what it actually achieves, again, I'm not trying to advocate). The general rationale is often on several grounds: -to create a "merit" based document trail - to create a basic barrier to entry that has to be crossed for all but the most basic positions. Think of it like a spam filter/ensuring candidates who want THAT job as opposed to just A job. The very thing you don't want is to have hundreds of 1 page dot point resumes coming in. How would you possibly find the time to go through them? You want to stop people applying just by sending in a generic summary resume and clicking a button. You want people who are willing to put a bit of work in to apply specifically to the job you're advertising. It is not uncommon for me, for instance, to write a cover letter for each job, and craft a specific version of my resume for each position, emphasising and exposing those parts of my experience most applicable to that particular position. You can only really do one or two of these well per week, but that's kinda the point.