An exercise in creative writing…

I haven’t put together what you might call a “normal resume” in well over two decades now. I think of the normal resume, geared towards a private sector employer as something short and punchy – definitely not longer than one or two pages. The federal resume, containing obsessive detail about every job you’ve ever had, by contrast, seems to run on forever.

According to my extensive personal files, the last time I updated my federal resume was in 2017. That must have been the last time I was feeling especially angsty and aggrieved – because that’s almost always the catalyst for spending the time to bring things up to date. Dumping the last six years of job related activities into it brought mine up to seven pages. It’s not the longest I’ve ever seen, since past me had helpfully edited down a lot of my early work history to the bone. By the time I’m done tweaking this version, I’ll be perilously close to spilling over onto the 8th page.

Resume length doesn’t particularly matter when it comes to federal work. The objective isn’t really to impress any individual hiring manager so much as it’s to build a document so full of key words that the computer that scans the files won’t have a choice but to proclaim you highly qualified and insert your resume into the pile that eventually makes its way to the selecting official. It’s akin to the difference between being a sniper and blasting away with a shotgun, where “close enough” is good enough.

In any case, I’m using some of my down time to pretty this mess up with an eye towards finding out if I still have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to beat the computer in case I ever need to pull that trigger. If nothing else, blowing the dust off is a good academic exercise. I’ll never tell a lie – especially on paper – but it’s surely the next door neighbor of creative writing.