Breaking Résumé Rules and Getting Away With It

As a lot of us have seen, "rules" (or perhaps guidelines is a better word) appear in books aplenty on how to compose a résumé, what to include, and what not to include. The most common mistakes include:

• Putting "résumé" (or curriculum vitae (CV), if you're in academia) at the top (it's obvious what the document is).
• Including personal information such as your birth date/place, marital status, spouse's, children's, pets' names, etc.
• Including hobbies, especially the mundane, e.g., reading, being with family, or worse potentially controversial, e.g., religious or political activities, etc.

As Richard Herman and Linda Sutherland so aptly put in their book: The 110 Biggest Mistakes Job Hunters Make (And How to Avoid Them), "don't use as 'filler' something that is potentially dynamite [explosive, that is, not awesome/rad/phat]."

So it was to my dismay that, while temping in an HR office recently, I ran across dozens of CVs of doctors and others that have enough information to delight a stalker or identity thief and make HR staff say, "whatever." But these folks got good jobs with these papers. My résumé has been praised by my alumni career counselor (after seeking a variety of counsel). I occasionally get interviews but no further.

Perhaps the discrepancy is best explained by that conventional wisdom that seems mercilessly true: "It's not what you know, it's who you know."