Geniuses that sing don’t need a resume

On December 9, 2025   /   Q&A   /   4 Comments

Question

Despite all the online job application tools, most employers still want my resume. (Though I’m not sure they read the applications or the resumes!) You’ve written a lot about resumes. I agree it’s a poor way to hire or look for a job and making personal contacts and getting referred is the way to go. But when a company wants something to read about you, what then? I’m fine doing a routine resume because all the sections required are defined. And I’m fine in interviews because I speak better than I write! But when I have to submit something in writing, how do I present the best “me?” How do I make it sing?

Nick’s Reply

The best “you” is not on your resume. Not by a long-shot. As you note, a resume is so overly defined that it’s virtually impossible to make “you” stand out.

I’m not a fan of resumes as a tool to get a job, or even to get an interview. The odds are just against you. By merely using a resume, you consign yourself to an ocean of competition — and the feeding frenzy is usually fatal. So I don’t understand why people even bother.

Yah, I know the response to that: Employers make us submit resumes! Without resumes, they won’t consider us!

Try something no one else is doing

Bunk. As I’ve pointed out before, employers hire people all the time without starting with a resume. Your resume should be nothing more than a document that helps “fill in the blanks” about your background — after the employer has gotten to know you. But to use it to introduce yourself? Why submit something that 10,000 other people have submitted, too?

If you are determined to “submit something in writing,” even before you’ve made substantive contact with a hiring manager (through a friend, a professional contact, an employee of the company — you know, through someone who actually influences the manager), then try something different.

In other articles, I’ve discussed giving the manager a business plan that shows how you’ll contribute to the bottom line. But there are other ways you can get the manager’s attention, too.

Don’t be one of “the same candidates”

The zillions of “resume books” and “cover letter books” are just going to teach you how to do what everyone else is doing. Your resume and letter will just be more chum on the waters. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Gilman Louie explains it this way:

“Because of the competition for talent, employers are unfortunately using those typical HR filtering systems to put resumes in the right piles and to line up the interviews. The problem with that is, whether you’re an established company or a start-up, everybody has the same algorithm…You can’t go through 2,000 candidates! HR processes 2,000 candidates! They don’t look through 2,000 candidates! And at the end of the process, what they get is the same candidate that everybody else running PeopleSoft gets! So where’s your competitive advantage if everybody turns up with the same candidates?”

Geniuses don’t need the resume algorithm

When I recommend books to help job hunters, I avoid career books because they all provide the same algorithm. I try to suggest books that will give people an edge, by applying good ideas from other domains to job hunting.

Here’s a book I’ll recommend that will set your head spinning — and throw off ideas that no resume book will give you. Accidental Genius: Using writing to generate your best ideas, insight and content by Mark Levy, shows you how to find the most powerful ideas about your work — from deep within your brain. Almost painlessly. But you have to invest some time to do it.

Mark Levy is a marketing guru. He wrote Accidental Genius to teach people how to lasso their best ideas and write them down — freely and without self-censorship.

Find your value

You’re not sure what your most valuable “accomplishments” are? The section, “Open up your words” shows you how to find the value in your experience, by writing freely about it. Finish up, and I’ll bet you’ll have the one or two sentences you need to demonstrate the value you’ve created in your work.

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Deliver commitments

Don’t know how to tell someone that you have ideas that will benefit their business — so that they’ll believe you? The section, “Sharing your unfinished thoughts” shows how to turn your ideas into commitments you can deliver on.

Find what motivates you

Don’t know what you really want to do for a next job? “Drop your mind on paper” turns off your internal editor and critic, and lets you “talk to yourself” honestly. And that’s where your motivation will come from, to go after the job you want.

Be a genius that sings

You can send a resume like everyone else does, or you can send your best ideas in a format that makes a manager want to meet you. It’s not a cover letter, and it’s not a resume. Levy calls it “free writing,” and I know it works — because I’ve used it in my own work. The good news: The book costs less than hiring a resume writer to do your resume. The best news: It’ll turn you into a better interviewee.

So practice free writing to reveal the “accidental genius” you really are. Give that hiring manager a version of you that sings.

How do you make your resume — and credentials — “sing”? Do employers even care? What’s the best resume-writing advice you’ve been given? Was it enough to make you stand out? How do you determine what makes you a candidate that “sings”?

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