There is a story about a traveler who passes three men moving bricks at a construction site. The traveler asks the first worker, "What are you doing?" The worker says, "I'm moving bricks." The traveler asks the second worker the same question, "What are you doing?" The second worker replies, "I'm building a wall." The traveler asks the third man the same question. "I," the third man replies, "am building a cathedral."

I reviewed a resume for a friend that described one of his contributions as "extracting and parsing program output from XML files." Technically, this is what he did, but he's describing his work in terms of the first or second man.

When you write a resume, don't just write what you did. Also write how it helped the company from a business standpoint. The real point of "extracting and parsing program output" was to support a company initiative to port one of their best selling products to a Windows platform. The new software was expected to drive millions of dollars in sales to new clients. This sounds much better.

I have to be honest; I grapple with giving this advice because on the surface it looks inflationary. It seems like "spin." But I think the benefits go beyond just making your resume look better. I think that a resume written in this style also benefits the company doing the hiring for three reasons:

• Some people make a career of avoiding important projects and doing "sidelines" work. They won't have much to write. The best people-the clutch people who seek out important projects- will have a lot to write.


• It is a valuable skill to be able to effectively communicate how contributions fit into the strategic objectives of a company. Anybody who writes their resume in this way shows that they are a better hire just by the act of doing it.


• Hopefully, this sort of high level thinking carries over into other responsibilities long after the resume is written. If you are thinking in terms of cathedrals, then you are looking for risks, opportunities, problems, and solutions on a larger scale.

My second bit of advice is to include specifics about your contributions. Was the project big? How many man hours in total? How much revenue did it generate? What was the budget? How many people?

Vagueness, on a resume, looks like you made stuff up. Being specific is the best way to add credibility to your resume. This is especially important because 95% of the time, someone is reading your resume when you aren't there to explain it.

Just a reminder: Use your judgement here, don't include any confidential information.