[withinboredom]

When I owned a consulting firm, I was also shocked at how low resume quality was. If you just spend a bit of time making your resume look good or stand out a little bit, it will go a really long way. There is a such thing as “too much information” or “too detailed.” I never had a problem of “too little information” because, as a human, I was able to fill in the blanks and if something didn’t make sense, I’d often interview them just to hear the story (and in a couple of cases, actually hire).

When I lived on a sailboat, it was often mentioned in my cover letter just to hopefully stand out. I’d get interviews just because I sounded like an interesting person (what these coworkers said later at company parties) and it would get my foot in the door.

[sfink]

On the flip side, when I was on the interview for a small startup a while back, I started learning to distrust resumes that were too good. I eventually figured out that it's because they used a resume preparation service. They weren't lying about anything, but it's amazing how different the same experience can sound. (Ok, quite a few were telling some white lies, but the strength of the resumes did not depend on lying.)

I'd say that the bottom 20% and the top 20% of resumes (that made it past the HR screen) were disappointing during the interview. The best people usually had decent but somewhat awkward or unclear resumes.