Why Job Adverts Suck and What You Can Do About It.

At the start of this year, and many years before it the pundits of HR and Recruitment (yes, they really exist) make predictions for the year ahead.  As well as borrowing heavily from the mantras of Silicon Valley startups promising to be social, mobile and local there is always one persistent prediction that never seems to go away.

The mists in the crystal ball clear and a vision of the future appears, with absolute certainty, our forecasters declare "The Job Description will cease to exist!".  Then, as if to mock that same prescient certainty, they don't.

Despite the flaws of the formats on both side of the job seeker chasm things seem to stay the same.  Whilst the prognosticators may lament that their visions haven't been proven right the world keeps turning, recruiters still want to see your CV and HR departments the world over keep posting banal job descriptions.  As much as recruiters may decry applicants for their terrible CVs or offer advice on how not make CV mistakes there doesn't seem to be quite the same amount of concern for the job descriptions and adverts that they themselves post supposedly to entice those looking for work.

The average job description is currently a mishmash of an older version of the original specification, some amendments from an enthusiastic new hiring manager and some sexier phrases stolen from various other company's career pages.  When you stop to consider the amount of work that marketers put into a banner or headline just to make a viewer click it's mind boggling to think that recruiters expect people to consider making such an enormous change to their lives on the basis of bland copy and trite cliché.

There must be a better way... and there is...

In 1943 Abraham Maslow published his paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in the Psychological Review. He posited a series of human drivers that worked sequentially, the lowest order of which must be satisfied in order to achieve the next. For example when starving to death we're unlikely to be concerned with how our peer group thinks of us, until we meet that more basic need.

 Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belonging", "esteem", "self-actualization" to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.  If we are using the format of a job advert as a means to motivating an action from a reader, could we borrow from the Maslow model to ensure that we are writing a well rounded and engaging advertisement?  Without too much of a mental stretch it's easy to see how these stages can be made applicable to pressing on the underlying motivations a person may have when wanting to apply or even moving from casual interest to intention and ultimately action.  At the very least we could use a model to broaden the appeal of a job advert and hit more of the motivational bases that Maslow identified.

The lowest order motivator for a job seeker has to be salary.  Whilst it is foundational and important it can quickly be satisfied and judged accordingly.  Try putting the actual salary range on your job postings and voilà the majority who apply will have some idea of how much you are prepared to pay for the role.  Assuming that your job is not unpaid or a front for slave labour stating a salary is a good idea.  Promising adequate or even fair pay for a candidate's toil should never be the best motivator you have to play.  Put simply, cash should never be your "ace in the hole",  if it is it's time to rethink the role.  Try talking to some other people who already do the job and ask them why they like it. Try to gain a deeper insight into the persona of those who enjoy the job - chances are that their reasons are probably inline with a potential employee's too.  It tends to be the third party recruiters who's job postings feature salary as the biggest incentive. "Java Developer $90,000" is a great indicator that the poster hasn't really understood the real differentiators or their target audience.

For a lot of job posts salary is where we stop. There may be other details given about the company doing the recruitment or a technology stack but these will be generic and explanatory e.g. "You will write code and fix bugs" these are statements which would be true of the same role in another organisation.  How can we make this a little more personal? Maslow's second step in the hierarchy is "Safety".  For job seekers this may take the form of permanent vs. contract or the security of your company as an entity.  These can be addressed early on, from startups referring to themselves as "VC funded" or larger corporates stating successes "Safety" should be accepted as quickly as the salary stage.  If you don't meet the needs of the job seeker here i.e. lower than expected salary and indeterminate contract length they will self select out of the process, and that's a good thing at this stage.  Remember a great job advert isn't about mass appeal it's about gaining the interest of the right people.  

A growing number of companies are following in the footsteps of the larger technical organisations and offering a bewildering number of perks and free incentives to their employees.  These are the hyperbolic tales of free food, dogs in the workplace, on site masseuses and hot and cold running champagne.  Who wouldn't want those things? However a lot of job adverts fall at this hurdle.  Promising money and free things are are a great way to have someone make a small change. Switching a bank account or internet service provider maybe but surely not enough to change employers?  Job security should be implied in any job description and the benefits and perks are nice to haves - but don't be swayed into thinking they are enough.

Maslow's third tier was "belonging" or "love".  For a job advert how can we convey a sense of somewhere a candidate might want to belong?  This is where a lot of job adverts fear to tread. We stop at the inanimate perks and don't consider the social interactions that having a job will bring.  Belonging in job adverts is best conveyed through the people the candidate will be working with. Humans are (mostly) social creatures and benefit from interaction.  Who really wants to spend eight hours a day treading the same carpet as people you hate? At the other end of the spectrum who would want to work with an ex-colleague or former manager who was an inspirational leader? Who might want to join a team of renowned experts in their field?  If we make a job advert generic and impersonal e.g. "You will work with our team of developers" we risk becoming generic.  Talking about the team is an opportunity to sell successes to a candidate and gain engagement from selling the pedigree of a potential peer group.  In the world of startup it's normal to see adverts proclaiming founders who are ex-Google or ex-Facebook in this way an employer borrows some of the perceived quality bar of their previous employers.

Another consideration for the "Team" level of a job advert is how the team organise and work together.  A job may be more attractive for a reader if it explicitly states that the team don't like to hold lengthy meetings, or that they work closely with other parts of the business.  There are some great examples here that would make brilliant recruiting messages like Spotify's excellent Engineering Culture video. For those who are harbouring frustrations about their current employer's bureaucracy or lack of insight and innovation, referring to how the prospective employing company gets work done can be revealing and enlightening.  Moreover, talking candidly about these things can help convey authenticity and engender trust in the reader.

For his fourth level Maslow talked about "Esteem".  This is the need for appreciation and respect.  People need to sense that they are valued and by others and feel that they are making a contribution to the world. When employees become unhappy and disengaged they slowly start to stagnate.  If they feel under appreciated or second best to others this happens all the quicker.  It may seem obvious to mention that  people like to feel valued but in a job advertisement it is wholly appropriate to mention how the role they will play will be important to the rest of the team or company.  It's a certainty that some of the role you're advertising will be similar to other roles at other companies - in these cases it's important to differentiate at a personal level.  It's a rare candidate that wants to be a cog in machine but still I see companies loudly proclaiming they are hiring "one thousand software developers this year!" the intended message is clearly designed to be one of security, though it's hard to escape from a different "come and be one of a crowd" vibe.  Remember a good job advert spurs the correct audience into action and acts as a self selection point for those who are not right.  A job advert should not be generic enough to attract all comers - if it does you just ensure that someone will have to wade through the mire of terrible candidates and machine gun applicants that apply to everything.

Knowing that the role you are performing is worthwhile and needed is a far better motivator than the lower level "carrot and stick" incentives of salary and mock "benefits" of legally mandated holiday entitlements.  The better job adverts will mention those truly motivating factors - autonomous working, results driven environments without the reliance of rules and policies.  This further adds authenticity and can be a real differentiator for a reader.

So what's left?  You have an advert for a new job that tells a candidate they'll be adequately financially rewarded, they'll be given a great set of benefits and the company is secure so their job will be too.  You've told them about the great team they they get to work with and then you've gone on to tell them how they'll fit into that team and why the work they will do is important and needed.  If you said that was all a job could do it's still pretty compelling, but Maslow has a further tier on the road to fulfilment.  "Self- actualisation". This is the final level of psychological development that can be achieved when all basic and mental needs are essentially fulfilled and the "actualisation" of the full personal potential takes place. Research shows that when people live lives that are different from their true nature and capabilities, they are less likely to be happy than those whose goals and lives match.

In job advertising terms how can we then offer this form of greater fulfilment to a prospective candidate?  A majority of job descriptions fail in the balance of power they portray.  Despite the current market for hires becoming tighter, in far too many posts on job boards there is a weird "you should be thankful that we deign to allow you to read this" holier than thou language choice that only the most spirit crushed drone would find engaging.  However, this has become the accepted convention for weird mash-up of job description cum advert that employers post. Part internal HR document, part external facing "sexed-up" hyperbole.

Instead of using language straight out of the mouths of the mill owners of the Industrial Revolution why not let candidates know what they stand to gain from being an employee.  What are the experiences they will have that will let them grow as individuals.  Will they gain new skills or be trained in new areas?  Will they get to mentor or be mentored by other employees leading to more rewarding interactions? Will they have the scope and the freedom to be truly creative? Are they empowered to innovate? This is the future facing final tier of any great job advert and if you can hint at a brighter future for those who come and work for you it might just be the tipping point for them to hit that big red apply button.

"They'll buy anything" - 10 steps to selling terrible software to Human Resources Departments

There's so much investment in HR and Recruiting tech at the moment there's never been a better time to monezite your confirmation bias, join the chorus of "Recruitment is broken!" and release a tool that ignores the "human" in Human Resources!  

Now all that stands in your way are the shadowy, purse-string wrangling HR directors.  How can we get past them?  Here are ten things you can do right now to start up, cash in, sell out and bro down!


STEP ONE - Say "It has an algorithm".

First of don't worry if you don't know what an algorithm is, neither do the majority of buyers of HR software.  What they will know is that the internet services and companies they have heard of all have algorithms.  They all use Google and the more savvy amongst them might use terms like "matching" or "ranking", in these cases it's best to just keep saying that your new tool has an algorithm and to look knowingly at them.  Remember it's always good practice to use the strength of your algorithm to cover up horrific design choices.  If a prospective customer is thinking about buying another tool be sure to belittle it and claim that the ugly, clunky interface you preside over is "hardcore computer science".


STEP TWO - Hold them to a lengthy "implementation period".

Remember the good old days when we all sold databases and they had to buy hardware and software to make it (sort of) work? Sadly the wealth of better software in other areas has made HR buyers expect more before signing those contracts.  Help indemnify your company against any expected or promised service levels by insisting on a lengthy "implementation period".  In almost every other discipline software is now sold as a service, like a utility with data stored on servers in the cloud.  Tell your buyers this is insecure and "a risk". The mention of "risk" is the kryptonite of the HR department.


STEP THREE - Don't have a API - Make them pay extra if they want to use their existing data or integrate with another tool!

After you've held your buyer to the customary length implementation period it's time to deliver half of the functionality they originally requested.  Be sure to leave out any particular features that they liked when they saw the software as these can be added later as "modules" and priced accordingly. Similarly if they'd like to import their existing candidate or employee database make sure that you charge for this.  Remember - Compatibility is for wimps! Why would you want to let them use another tool that's better than yours? Make exporting that data just as difficult as importing it was!


STEP FOUR - They'll want "analytics" - Add a graph!

If you've been to any of the conferences you'll have heard that "Big Data" is the next cool thing to have.  You should start by dropping into conversation that your tool/app/rebranded ATS has a "Big Data approach".  Don't worry about getting called out on this, like "algorithm" it's one of the #HRTech magic words.  You will however have to ensure that you provide some "analytics" to your users.  It's important to either not measure anything that will encourage the user to ask more questions or to make generating a report on the data so impregnable and counter intuitive that the user will rely on the templates included and not be encouraged to expect anything that is of real use.


STEP FIVE - Advertise it as "White-labelled" - Allow them to upload a low resolution jpeg of their logo.

"Culture" is so hot right now. When selling to HR and Recruitment buyers tell them that your software can help them "differentiate" themselves and "level the playing field".  For most of your buyers "culture" will probably boil down to them uploading a photo of their office and a logo.  Let them do this and maybe even let them link to their Pinterest page.  If your buyer talks a lot about their unique culture remember to always refer to candidates and applicants as a "talent pool" they'll love it.


STEP SIX - Copy a competitor's tool.

There are so many products available for recruiters and HR professionals out there at the moment that there will undoubtedly be a tool that does the same thing as the software you're selling, probably better too.  It's not enough just to rely on buyer ignorance or indifference.  In some cases it will be prudent and ensure the sale, to implement a "sort of" feature that does "almost" the same thing.  Don't worry that it's not as good as the original tool you've copied you'll still hit the requirement on the buyer's checklist and there won't be any comeback as they are invariably not the ones who'll have to use it!

The best thing about these MSF's (minimum saleable features) is that with enough of them you can call the resultant Frankenstein's monster a "platform" and make even loftier claims.  Whilst the most prudent recruiters will use the right tool for the right job it will pay you to remember that the buyers aren't the users here and if you can sell them the dream of seamless interaction they'll be nice and blinkered later on when the reality is a cobbled together hotchpotch of "almost tools".


STEP SEVEN - Say it's "Social".

The "social" bandwagon is still trundling along nicely and whilst the forerunners have already realised it takes time and a personality to be truly social, there's still money to be made from those wanting a shortcut.  A link to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn should be enough, remember the best thing is that "social" can't be owned by a service provider, instead it relies on the user investing time and authenticity - if it fails it's never the tools fault! Brilliant!

It's important as a vendor to only talk about "social" in very broad terms, HR departments are a flighty bunch and it was only last week they had all banned the use of any social media at all now the other extreme is true and all their current "social tools" spit out and reiterate their job postings to the few that follow them.


STEP EIGHT - Reinvent the wheel - take a free tool they are already using and make them pay for it!

When adding features it's important to monetize tools that HR and Recruitment currently use for free. Skype and Google Hangouts are both free and been in wide usage for years by interviewers all over the world, cost benefits abound and these are saleable.  Of course you'll have to argue that Skype and Hangouts are of inferior quality or use value to your shiny new tool, you can do this by adding weird functionality like recorded responses. Video interviewing is great because is allows a human connection, let's get rid of that and have people record their answers to posed questions! Thus robbing the emotional interaction and reducing the tool to some voyeur's delight and reducing the recruiter to a passive couch potato condemned to watching the worst reality TV show ever imagined...


STEP NINE - Force the customer into your workflow.

Despite their protestations that they all want to be unique and different, it's never stopped a vast number of companies forcing their candidates into redundant form filling and duplication of effort.  As the software provider you should only care about the buyer, candidates should be made to apply in triplicate if it so pleases the bill payer.  Remember you'll only actually reveal the absurd workflow or user interaction after the buyer has signed, users may end up doing insane things like emailing resumes to themselves but after you've got your money that's their lookout.  Regardless that the client will be wanting to differentiate themselves to prospective employees it's less time and hassle to make them all leap through the same hoops.  If your tool does include candidate contact feel free to include some email templates - it's best to make these non-editable and send at random points just for fun...


STEP TEN - DO NOT talk to anyone who will actually use the tool during requirements capture.

This is the most important step.  Before you sell anything to anyone, before you even start to build any software, don't under any circumstances talk to a user from HR or Recruitment.  Most people who will eventually use your tool will actually want to be saved from repetitive tasks or data entry, they'll want a tool that enhances their abilities, they'll have a list of workarounds that they currently endure with existing tools and they might even have ideas of their own.

Whilst these would result in a more useable tool they won't necessarily be attractive to the buyers in HR (who won't be using the tool you're building), the potential investors who will want to buy your tool or even confirm your own bias as to why "Recruitment is broken". It's best to completely disregard potential users of your software and applicants/those who will be used by the software.


Armed with this sage advice you'll be well prepared to produce a tool that will garner a lot of attention and sizeable investment whilst adding almost nothing to an organisations ability to hire or retain people.  Remember there's no individual or human interaction that can't be successfully repressed or ignored by a well implemented process or tool!

The Magic of the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator - The Technological Panaceas of Hiring that aren't.

Hiring is scary.

Hiring is a risky process that we all know can do irreparable damage if we get it wrong.  There are countless studies that all make the case that a false positive is more damaging that a false negative.  It's hard to "undo" a bad hire.  So how do we mitigate against this?

In the world of hiring there is an anti-pattern that the answer to the question of "how to hire?" is always answered better elsewhere.  We tell ourselves there exists a panacea for hiring.  There is a strategy to beat all others.  A technology so advanced that it alone is enabling a rival to mop up all that talent that's spilling all over the place.  In effect, in making strategic decisions about technology in hiring we have outsourced our facility for critical thought.

We believe the purveyors of these advances because they come with the trappings of authority. They quote statistics in polished powerpoint presentations, wield certificates with pseudo-scientific credentials or a hat.  So much of the decision making for strategy in recruitment has become about copying our competitors.  We assume that if something is working elsewhere it will work for us. Often this is based on information that is outdated and organisations don't change their processes to fit in with the new thinking.  Take for example the role of those "impossible to answer questions" pioneered by Microsoft and later Google.  It is now industry wide common knowledge that there is no correlation between the ability to answer these brainteaser questions and the ability to perform well in the role you are interviewing for.  Yet how many organisations are still asking them because they think they should be?  When was the last time you ran an audit of the questions asked at interview in your organisation?

Ever since companies have needed to hire people there have been providers offering them magic-bullet future predicting insights into their candidates.  With just a few answers to a test you can predict the suitability of a candidate for your company.  The granddaddy of these magical tests is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

The test sorts it's takers into one of 16 different types each with a description that have now been misappropriated by HR departments to make wide ranging judgments about the suitability of prospective employees.  There have been many more erudite take downs of the lack of use of the MBTI this is a great place to start.

Here, as a primer, are a few reasons why the MBTI shouldn't be used in decision making when hiring -

• The test is based on the work of Carl Jung and uses his "types" in a way he said they shouldn't be used "Every individual is an exception to the rule," Jung wrote.
• Jung's principles were later adapted into a test by Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, who had no formal training in psychology.
• The test uses false, limited binaries that force the taker into a either/or choice often on measurements where a better representation is that we are all somewhere on a spectrum.  Jung himself wrote "there is no such thing as a pure extravert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum."
• As much as 50 percent of people arrive at a different result the second time they take a test, even if it's just five weeks later.

Lastly and perhaps the best first step to make when evaluating the claims of any HR holy grail is to look at who stands to benefit from the introduction of any new test, technology or methodology.  More often than not this benefit is either financial or one of prestige.  In the case of the Myers-Briggs there is a self supporting industry of those that pay for the licensing to become testers and then propagate the test's worth within their organisations thus increasing the need for their own services.  The real winner in the "success" of the MBTI is it's producer.

This is a truism for any of the latest crazes and bandwagon technologies that present themselves in the hiring space.  If someone stands to benefit then they will tell everyone that it's the best thing ever and will change the face of recruitment as we know it.  Be wary of that hyperbole for that way lies a trail a misspent dollars.

The hard truth that we all face is of course that there is no one perfect system.  There is no solution that can be purchased that will solve all your hiring ills.  There are organisations that make great strides in their own hiring and those stories have worth.  However, as an industry we shouldn't seek to become an inferior copy of another's success.  Instead we should ask ourselves what are those aspects that seem to work for others that we could trial and adopt at our own companies.  Listen to the stories of others but know that the stories themselves are not the path to knowledge. Knowing something requires research.

We should think critically about both the message and the messenger before going ahead with those decisions that will shape our ability to attract and retain talent for years to come (or at least until the next bandwagon we jump on).

So the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator isn't magic. It's that magical thinking that is a failure of critical thinking. Not thinking critically about a testing framework that you later use as a reference point to inform your decision making is an act of sabotage against your employer... but then I would say that I'm an ENTJ.

7 Myths About Great Résumés

When friends find out I work in recruitment they often have a lot of questions.  They might ask for funny stories, the strangest applications I've seen, but it's never that long until I'm asked if I'll look at their own resume.  Sad though it may seem, I don't mind doing this, actually I quite enjoy it.  Almost every time I've done this I hear the same justifications for formatting, length, and content come up again and again.

I'm sure that this advice is always given with the best of intentions to those seeking jobs.  It's folksy, friendly and given in the same tones as the motherly maxims we were fed as children. However, times have changed.  We know that if we pull "that face" we won't stay that way, we know that eating those crusts didn't put hair on our chests, we even know that if you swallow chewing gum it wouldn't "wrap around your heart and kill you" (my elder sister used to tell me this with absolute conviction).  So much of this weird advice is now dismissed and yet when it come to job seeking we hold certain things to be absolute truths.  Here are seven thing people blindly accept as the "right way" and the reasons I think we can now give up on them.

Myth Number 1 - "Your resume should only be 1 page."

Truth - This is one of the most pervasive pieces of advice I hear.  Often I find people struggling to fit their experience on a page, resorting to 10pt font size or self-censoring and leaving some great things out, desperately attempting to make everything fit into no more than two sides of A4.  The problem with that?  I will probably never print your resume.  "Sides of paper" is a physical restriction that modern ATS's (Applicant Tracking Systems) and candidate tracking systems have made redundant.  The truth is that I will scroll through a CV on a screen, normally in a frame within another application, I'll be reading your resume not counting pages.  Some recruitment software even removes page breaks so the length is purely a measure of holding a recruiter's interest. Write interesting, relevant content and a recruiter won't mind if you add a page.

Myth Number 2 - "Avoid all complicated fonts or design elements."

Truth - This is another of those things that was potentially true in the past.  When looking at a paper resume it may have been the case that in printing a complex design would be corrupted in some way.  Similarly, early ATS's couldn't cope with any design elements as they tried to parse documents and strip out information.  Any modern system will now happily display submitted resumes in a variety of formats, even as beautifully crafted .pdfs the better systems are now advanced to the point where they can do this and still strip out information and enable searching.  Never has this advice been so misplaced when I was recently looking for designers.  The number of standard template resumes I received was scary - if you're a designer show it! If the design you send to a recruiter is overly complex and doesn't convey information clearly it will tell them a lot more about your abilities than the content.

Myth Number 3 - "Recruiters only spend 5 seconds looking at a resume."

Truth - Recruiters only spend five seconds looking at a bad resume.  With clarity of format and inclusion of relevant information you encourage a reader to read on.  Irrelevant, clichéd or boring copy means anyone, not just a recruiter won't linger for long.  You should write in a consistent format that is easy to take in - I have suggested the following format for wring about each job -

Company - Role Title - Dates of Employment

Who the company are, what they do - just a couple of sentences. 

The role you were tasked to perform - the duties you had

Achievements in the role - Call attention to specific things that match the role you're applying for or experiences you want to call out. 

This makes for easy reading, it tells me what you did, and how you did it. I don't have to second guess obscure job titles and still offers you the chance to blow your own trumpet a little.

Myth Number 4 - "Use Bullet Points."

I like bullet points, when listed the duties you undertook or telling me about specific individual elements of a whole they're great.  However, not everything should be bulleted.  I've seen resumes that are so clipped and hammered into bullet lists that they are no longer comprehensible.  As a rule any stylistic choice should enhance legibility.  If a resume is comprised totally of bullet points, each with their own clipped structure it can be like reading a newspaper using only the headlines.  I'll thank you for the brevity but I'll also doubt your ability to write a complete sentence.

Myth Number 5 - "Identify the problems of the employer."

Truth - Don't do this. I've never seen an example of this that doesn't sound arrogant.  I can't imagine a case where it wouldn't.  Cite relevant experiences, give examples that you think may resonate with the problems that your target employer would also face, but the assumption of a candidate leaping in and saving the company they are applying to work for is a turn off for most recruiters I know.

Myth Number 6 - "Don't use jargon."

Truth - Don't dumb down your resume to the point that it looks as though you don't know what you're talking about.  This is particularly true for technical professions.  A candidate is correct to assume some level of knowledge from the recruiter who is reviewing the resumes before they reach a hiring manager.  If a developer or sys admin is giving more details about a project they worked on I want to to know what technologies they used.  There's another reason to keep in the technical terms too - they are often how resumes are searched and candidates are discovered in the first place. In any database of resumes, LinkedIn included, search is initially about filtering millions of people through key words - they have to be there.
   Technical terms are not meaningless, include them.  Don't include the truly meaningless, clichéd company specific terms or management speak but if the term is relevant and needed don't be afraid to use it.  A good recruiter can either be relied upon to google the term or if the rest of the resume is good they'll ask you.

Myth Number 7 - "Don't add your hobbies or interests."

Truth - As a recruiter I tend to see all candidates as meaty flesh bags containing a skill set, their only possible use being to serve the organisation for which I currently ply my trade, said no one ever.  An organisation that would discriminate against you for your hobbies or interests probably isn't one you would want to work for.  However, there are some people who may have legal yet contentious pastimes.  Things that might not be a good idea to add are religion or political activity or hunting as an example.  It's important not to give the recruiter a reason to reject your application out of hand but at the same time as a recruiter I'd still like to know you were a well rounded human being.  
In a related area, don't make up hobbies or interests, recruiters will ask you about them.  There's nothing more awkward for us both like a sudden improvisation about your made up live action role-playing experiences.

Remember as Mary Schmich said "Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of 
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth". The next time that someone offers you some advice on your resume make sure that it really applies to the application you're making, but this is just my advice.