This story is about the ‘Copy and Pasters’ who inhabit Adelaide’s resume writing community.

To be honest, most don’t live in Adelaide. While that’s an issue, a much graver concern is the quality of the work they produce.

They copy and paste the same text over and over again across multiple resumes.

Adelaide’s recruiters and employers get the dubious pleasure of reading the same crap, over and over again.

Below is a real life example. The Executive Summary is the most important part of a resume.

It’s where you summate your recent career, skills and capabilities and sell yourself to the employer for the specific job you are targeting.

Think like a recruiter and ask yourself, ‘what does this person do?’

Executive Summary

“A highly qualified and experienced professional known for a combination of focused technical and mechanical skills; leadership, analytical and planning capabilities, and interpersonal strengths. Strong background in Maintenance and Mechanical Operations, Technical Leadership, Stakeholder Engagement, Staff Management, Safety Management and Compliance gained from numerous years of employment history within the mining and trades sector. Possessing highly developed management skills, strong technical aptitude, determination, capabilities and the ability to maintain a safe job site based on legal and company guidelines. Recognised for successfully delivering maintenance operations utilising a results-oriented approach. Holds a solid record of leadership, subject matter expertise and decision-making.”

This waffle hits the recruiter’s spike in about five seconds. Known? By who? Why are the terms capitalised? How many years are ‘numerous years’? Exactly what sort of trade? There’s a redundancy in the first and second sentence with technical and mechanical skills (repeated twice). Recognised by who?

Are you going to interview this person based on this? No. There’s a big difference between the ‘Copy and Pasters’ and professional writers. The latter will get you short-listed for work.