Resume Tales: The Degradation of Knowledge by Economic Greed

During the global economic downturn of recent years, the low-end online resume and careers industry expanded to glutenous levels, thriving off the despair of jobless Americans who who spent days - sometimes weeks - scouring the internet, desperate to find ways to boost their job prospects. 

From within the festering, dog-eat-dog world of America's recession-time job-market, emerged the perfect environment in which shameless webmasters could falsely pose as career coaches, and begin plying their fraudulent trade. But to maximize their earning potential the race was on to discover what exactly made a winning resume. Highly effective resume writing techniques already existed, but these were the closely guarded secrets of executive resume writers, and they weren’t about to divulge information that had taken them decades to acquire, having been passed down from generation to generation of resume writer.

Eager to get their hands on a piece of the pie, e-entrepreneurs started investing time and money into deciphering exactly what contributed towards a resume’s effectiveness. 

Pre 2008:

With the land of the free happily plodding through a credit-fueled economic golden era - blissfully ignorant of rapidly mounting toxic debt – the process of getting hired was equally peachy. To switch jobs, all one’s resume needed to do was demonstrate that an applicant met basic job application requirements, and that they held some relevant experience.

Yes, the job market was still a competitive environment, but for mid-level jobs, landing a job interview was relatively easy.

Competition only existed at the top end of the employment ladder. C-level executives, directors, regional managers and company presidents were the ones that suffered the woes of an intense hiring processes. But with 6 figure salaries at their disposal, they had resources that enabled them to seek out assistance from the highest order of employment professionals: that of a Certified Professional Resume Writer.

Suckling at the bosom of a CPRW, senior level job seekers were endowed with expertly crafted documents specifically crafted to meet their needs - enabling them bypass the firey gates of a HR department, and step straight into the interview room.

And then the recession hit. As companies downsized, manufacturers shut down and the unemployment line grew, competition for jobs increased…ten fold. Suddenly, at all levels of the career ladder, job openings were flooded with applications. The pressures of an executive level job-seekers descended onto the mid-career common man.

In a failing economy, auserity measures tightened and the need to find a job weighed down on everyday Americans, across all industries – unfortunately the job adverts had already dried up. Job openings were now hotly sought after proverbial needles in the hay stack. When it came to the recruitment process, hiring managers had to evolve to become more scrupulous about to whom they gave an interview. They were now required to sift through thousands of resumes for every single job opening they had. Sadly, for thousands of hopeful job applicants, on average only a dozen or so would be selected for interview.

For job seekers everywhere, the race was on: adapt your resume to separate yourself from the crowd, beat the competition, win the job. Survival rested in the hands of those in the know.

At this point, tried and tested resume writing techniques used exclusively by high-end professional writers, quickly turned into highly prized knowledge. However, the honorable code of a CPRW, maintained by generation after generation of writers, vowed to keep such secrets confidential. The sanctity of their nobel industry had to be protected, for if such powerful knowledge were to fall into the wrong hands, it would surely lead to the total destruction of the professional resume writers industry, and the downfall of CPRWs everywhere.

Unfortunately, fate was not forgiving. Inevitably, bit by bit, the smallest nuggets of resume advice began to leak out. The foundations of the resume writer’s world began to decay, resume tip by resume tip.

In awe of their industry’s impending doom, back-handed deals between avaricious resume writers and young online start-up owners fueled the emergence of highly privy information across the internet – the secrets were out, and they were frivolously appearing on newly founded career service websites everywhere.

Through the profiteering ways of corrupt resume-writers and cash-thirsty website owners, a terrible thing happened: the common, unemployed man managed to gain access to an industry's best kept secrets.

The holy grail of resume writing was no longer holy. Resume tips flooded the internet; at first only available through premium rate services provided by newly acclaimed "career coaches", but slowly these services became cheaper, and cheaper. As the resume writing industry’s closely guarded secrets were being shamelessly sold off like a stale loaf of Wall Mart bakery bread quickly approaching its expiry date, resume tips were being traded in advice forums, offered up for sub-value monthly subscriptions, and all at once the flow of information became too powerful to reverse.

Like Doc and Marty, thundering down the train tracks, steam engine blowing, bolts rattling, the confidentiality of career coach expertise had passed the point of no return.

A new era had began: resume tips were now found being published completely free on website blogs, worldwide. What was once highly sacred knowledge, kept safe in the hands of experts, tentatively nurtured and passed down through the ages, had quickly turned into worthless throw-away advice, easily available to the masses.

 With such unchecked freedom of information came the irreversible empowerment of jobless Americans - job seekers had never had it so easy. Resume tips were shamelessly posted for the whimsicle use of marauding unemployed Americans, ferociously pillaging the internet for every last drop of career advice.

Resume tips were being sucked of their value – underqualified job seekers with problematic work histories were walking around with perfectly worded Career Profiles, clear presentations of their key skills, and concise yet targeted expositions of their Professional background, all elegently formatted on a crisp, off-white sheet of watermarked resume paper.

Expert advice had now lost it’s value – as perfectly crafted resumes became the norm, recruiters now moved on to find other ways to assess job applicants.

Tears would uncontrollably well in the eyes of helpless CPRWs everywhere, pained by the brutal defloration of their industry at the hands of website owners desperate to make a quick buck. And having driven the value of resume advice now firmly into the ground, career website owners now shamefully turned to the dishonrable world of internet advertising to help monitize their websites. In a heartbeat, the chastity of veritable knowledge was barbarically besmirched and sooted with the stains of online gambling adverts, erectile disfunction solutions, work-from-home programs, and Nigerian banking scams. 

Like flogging a dead horse, the rape of resume expertise continued, and all a CPRW could do was stand by and watch the desecration of his knowledge, until it was time to move on.

There was no turning back. Things would never be the same again.