Resume Integrity – The Truth and Consequences of Dumbing Down Your Resume

I remember cringing when I first read the Wall Street Journal article that talked about job seekers dumbing down their resumes in order to land a job. As a Certified Resume Strategist who has worked with thousands of clients at all stages of their career, I knew that there were alternatives to selling oneself short, and I found the whole notion of “dumbing down” a tragic waste of talent.

The issue came up for me again when I came across a recent advice column in which the president of a large Canadian resume writing and career coaching firm provided advice on how to dumb down one’s resume. Wow, I thought, has it really come to this, that even the professionals in our industry are offering recommendations on this approach? So I decided to dig a little deeper to determine whether job seekers were finding success with their “dumbed down” resumes. I posted a discussion on LinkedIn, issued a “Help a Reporter” request, and scanned the internet for anecdotal evidence. Not surprisingly, given the state of the economy and rising unemployment rates, there has been a lot of cyber-ink dedicated to the issue. Here’s what I found.

Dumbing Down Your Resume – The Job Seeker’s Perspective

The vast majority of job seekers that I talked to who tried using a dumbed-down resume did get more interviews, but still weren’t landing the job. One HARO respondent told me, “I nearly always dumb down the resume but I haven’t had much luck– rarely the interviewer would like to have more info so I end up sending more. But I haven’t been hired one way or the other.” Another said, “I wasn’t getting any calls for interviews before, and now I am, but so far, I’m still looking.” A consistent pattern seems to be that these job seekers are coming in as second or third candidate of choice, but they can’t hide their knowledge, experience or age when it comes time for the interview.

Of the job seekers who were successful in getting work with a dumbed-down resume, many expressed, “off the record”, that they hated their new job. A former Marketing Manager who re-branded herself to Marketing Coordinator in order to find gainful employment told me, “It’s a balancing act, I have to tell you. I really thought I could do it. I was sure that I could step back, do my job with dignity and professionalism. But I have to admit, it’s harder than I thought. It’s hard to be enthusiastic about your work when you are reporting to somebody in flip flops who is comfortable using ‘icky’ in her business  conversations. And frankly, I’m BORED!!!! All those advice columns were true. I try to keep my energy up, to find ways of making the job more interesting, but… I guess the worse thing is, now that I’m working full time, I don’t have as much time to look for the job I really want. But at least I have a paycheque, right?”

Another contact who dumbed down his resume during the last recession said that his career never recovered. “I didn’t really think about it at the time, because I really, really needed to start earning some money, but I wasn’t just dumbing down my resume, I was dumbing down my career. When the economy recovered, I couldn’t get back into my old career stream, because now I was trying to market myself with a lower level job on my resume.”

I did come across people who were both successful and happy that they opted to undersell themselves. “I was having trouble getting a job and so began leaving off my MA thinking that employers would think I’m too young to have one (I was 23). Long story short, after doing so I received 5 offers for interviews and got a job. Few months later I told my boss about that casually and he laughed and told me I never would have been hired if he knew because he would have thought I’d want too much money. Unfortunately our society punishes very educated individuals sometimes.”

Dumbing Down Your Resume – Recruiters’ Perspectives

Hiring managers who discover that candidates are dumbing down their resumes told me that they are instantly suspicious. As one recruiter described it, “I have access to tens of thousands of resumes through job boards, and I occasionally come across alternative versions for the same candidate. If they have Director in one version, Manager in a second, and Analyst in a third, I have to wonder what the heck is going on. Same thing if the titles on their resume don’t match what comes up on their LinkedIn profile. I can’t afford to recommend a candidate to a client unless I have complete confidence in their integrity – I can’t afford to let them make me look bad. And somebody who is prepared to be less than truthful on their resume is a high risk for making me look bad.”

In our LinkedIn debate, Mike Muyal, Director of Marketing at Levelor, had similar sentiments, “If ‘dumbing down’ means making one’s achievements seem less important, or eliminating some of them entirely…hmm..not too sure about that. If it means making an over-qualified candidate look more appropriate for a junior job so they can ‘get their foot in the door’…well, I wouldn’t like that either. Especially since I could have a star performer in a lower-level job, who in turn becomes more difficult to keep motivated and engaged…and I’ve got nothing to offer her.”

Mike’s concerns are not unfounded. I talked to one business owner who discovered during the interview that a candidate for a mid-level operations position was presenting himself as less qualified than he really was. “He admitted it in the interview that he had an MBA, and used to be a Director in a different industry. I was worried that he would be bored. Our company is small, so I knew that I couldn’t provide him with a lot of variety. But he was very persuasive, and I thought what the heck, I’m getting really good value for my money. I was wrong. He started with oomph, but within two months he was questioning every decision I made and trying to completely rebuild my company. Some of his ideas were good, I’ll admit, but I don’t have time to implement every new-ass MBA idea, I have a business to run. I could see that he was frustrated, and it started showing in his attitude. In less than a year, he quit for something better, and I had to start all over again.”

Dumbing Down Your Resume – Perspectives from Career Services Professionals

Many of the career services experts who have waded in on the issue come down on side of “don’t dumb down”. In fact Sharon Graham, founder of Graham Management and Executive Director of Career Professionals of Canada, was stimulated by our LinkedIn discussion to devote a podcast on the matter.

Others, such as Megan Pittsley, Job Center Manager at City of Livermore, are more pragmatic. “I personally have always found job titles flexible (both as a resume writer and a recruiter), since they vary so greatly from organization to organization. A Director at a small company is similar to a Manager at a large one, government job titles are terribly unfocused, etc. As long as a point is made during an interview to state why you chose to use a functional title versus an in-house formal title no one really cares (if you can sell it). Instead of putting “Director of Marketing”, just put “Marketing” and allow them to see what you accomplished without a discriminating title attached to it.

I don’t feel it shows a lack of integrity whatsoever; just being smart on how you mold your professional image so that people clearly understand what you did.  Sometimes people do actually need to tone down or dumb down their resumes if they genuinely seek a lower position because there aren’t any at their level available and they need a paycheck (I love to be idealistic but now is a time for reality), or because of personal reasons (want less responsibility, job is close to home, etc.) Recruiters can and will toss out resumes for overly experienced or educated applicants before even speaking to them.”

Dumbing Down Your Resume – Some Final Thoughts from a Certified Resume Strategist

I have empathy for job seekers who are desperate to find a job, any job, and think that dumbing down their resume is their only chance. However, I think it is short-sighted, and further, I think that in the very near future it won’t even be an option. With new tools like Applicant Explorer, recruiters are going to be able to build a comprehensive picture of you based on your tweets, your Facebook content, your contributions to discussion forums, your blog posts, and any other web source in which your name appears.

In today’s internet-driven job market, jobseekers are going to find it very hard to try and market themselves under multiple “brands” with conflicting data. Many job boards already sell their candidate lists, and some corporations have agreements to pool candidate submissions (after, of course, they have already on-boarded their top candidate). Jobseekers will no longer be able to assume that a resume submitted for a position with one company won’t end up on the desk of a totally different firm or recruiter, which means that discrepancies between resumes are going to turn up.

If the basic facts of your resume aren’t consistent from one version to the next – the dates, the company names, the job titles, and the academic credentials – then, as the Cuban band leader liked to say, “Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do.” And chances are that a recruiter or hiring manager is never going to give you the chance to do that.

In the face of touch-of-the-button convergence of web data about you, it will be career wise to ensure that you are presenting a consistent and compelling personal brand across your entire web footprint. This doesn’t mean that you should use the exact same resume for every position you apply to. That isn’t strategic, and it won’t work. It is strategic to tailor your profile and selected accomplishments to the target job – recruiters expect this, and welcome it. As Mike Muyal said, “As a hiring manager, the easier it is for me to focus and get to the gist of a candidate’s qualifications, the better.”  It is strategic to focus on your past ten years – five if you are in IT.

Finally, it is strategic to use your resume as part of a well-thought out job search plan, rather than in scatter-gun approach. This means making the extra effort to thoroughly understand the motivating factors of the target company so that you know how to pitch your qualifications. I’ll close my contributions to the discussion with a terrific example of a strategic resume in action, brought to me by Edward Chance: “The best resume I ever read began like this: ‘My father was in charge of the men’s lavatory at the Ritz Hotel. My mother was a chambermaid at the same hotel. I was educated at the London School of Economics.’ Ray Taylor got the job as a copywriter at Ogilvy and Mather. He had a glorious career. Taylor knew who scrutinized resumes at O&M – agency founder David Ogilvy, who took great pride in raising himself to fame and fortune from the genteel poverty of his English childhood.”

Tags: Dumbing down, how to write a resume, Resume

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