Excellent points!!
When I lived in The Netherlands, a Curriculum Vitae (r?sum?) had to be handwritten. Typed version were not permitted at that time.
"Handwritten!?" Golly, that would eliminate a slew of current college kids who can't even READ cursive handwriting, let alone use it. Last year, at a seminar at the local community college, I wrote some points in cursive (I have VERY legible handwriting) on the whiteboard. Two of the younger members of the class shot their hands up. The first one said, "I can't read that!" The second one said, "What language is that?"
The incident raised a brief discussion. Only a very few thought it strange that some couldn't read my very legible cursive and not one thought it strange that many NEVER wrote in cursive, but only printed if they couldn't use a keyboard. I asked each of the 12 in the seminar to come up and put his/her signature on the board (the one they use on checks and ID documents.) I could only read about six of them without effort and two (the ones who couldn't read my writing) had kind of printed signatures. The ones I couldn't decipher were like the
Treasury Secretary nominee's. They had no identifiable characters.
Bottom line??
There's a growing trend to drop cursive writing from the curriculum in a number of schools today. I predict the trend will continue. Cursive probably started as a form of "speedwriting" and, secondarily, to limit ink blotches from starting and stopping the pen in making letters. Today, folks able to use keyboards or touchscreens don't have those concerns.
Scribes and copyists began to fade once Guttenberg invented and used movable type.
BACK on the thread
There are functional differences between writing clear narrative sentences (in a cover letter) and using bullet points and outline phrases in a resume.
In the cover letter, a candidate is best served by creating a compelling "story" of the value he can deliver to a prospective employer. It should be compelling enough (including spelling and grammar) to induce the reader to say, "We should interview this interesting person and find out more."
The resume is, at base, just a compilation of historical facts. What separates one that's kept and considered from the one that goes in the trash is often just a subjective opinion by the reader, NOT an objective evaluation of the facts contained therein. Eliminating the "turnoffs" (wordiness, poor spelling, poor grammar, poor typography, messiness, etc.) is just one way of dealing with the subjective factor.
Earlier, a poster brought up "blanks" in the history. Blanks happen. They are facts. They are facts that will appear in lots of resumes covering the past four years. There are ways to explain the gaps and blanks.
For those really having trouble with gaps and blanks, start a new thread and we can take it up as a special topic. What will NEVER work in the long run is trying to hide such blanks. Once discovered, they create distrust ("What else is he hiding?") and prospective employers find it easier to just move on to the next candidate rather than clear the air.
re?su?m? or re?su?me or r??su?m?
are all different, but acceptable spellings - In Europe, folks more frequently use C.V. (Curriculum vitae) and in North America folks use one of the three above. Personally, I have gotten out of the habit of adding the
accent aigu ? on either or both of the "e" characters because most times I'm working on a keyboard that doesn't easily allow extended ASCII characters.
Trust me on this - if the employer is so fussy he trashes your resume because you didn't use French accents over your letters, you probably didn't want to work for him anyway.
