Like so many people today, I will soon be looking for a job. I haven’t hunted a job since before Y2K. For young people, that was midnight January 1, 2000, when we all expected airplanes to fall out of the sky and every single machine in every hospital in the world to stop working at midnight. Anyway, it was a long time ago, and my job pursuit skills have atrophied.

It doesn’t help that my main professional skills are being sarcastic, predicting disaster, and drinking Diet Coke all day. Oh, and saying, “No.” I can say no to orphans and puppies and people who want us to do stupid stuff for free. I have no problem with that.

Now that I’m sneaking back into the job market, I have to deal with one of the dumbest things humans ever invented—the resume. I understand its theoretical purpose. I’ve read hundreds of resumes. If I want to hire someone, I can’t talk to every person who applies for the job. I have to weed them out somehow. Thus, they send resumes, and I interview the ones who sent me a cool resume.

I’m sure you see the flaw here. I don’t necessarily interview the people who would be good at the job. I interview the people who are good at writing resumes. I can’t tell the difference, because the key to a good resume is being accurate in every detail, but presenting things in a way that will make your future employer want to talk to you more than they want to eat leftover cookies in the break room.

It can confuse things, or even be misleading. To show you what I mean, think about the villain from the Lord of the Rings books by J.R.R. Tolkien. His name is Sauron, and if you’ve never heard of him or read the books, don’t worry about it. Everything I’m about to say makes sense even if you haven’t read Tolkien’s thousand or so pages.

Anyway, let’s just say that at the end of the books Sauron is out of a job. If he still had a material body and wanted to get a new job in corporate America, he’d need a resume. Here’s an example of how a resume coach might take his basic information and craft it into an interview-landing resume.

GOALS – Sauron begins with his career goal.

Career Goal: Dark Lord of a Malevolent Empire Dedicated to Bringing Misery and Destruction to Everyone Everywhere

This is a bit too specific. He’d cast a wider net by generalizing while still being clear about what he wants.

Career Goal: Executive Leadership Position in an Aggressive, Goal-Driven, World-Class Organization

CORE SKILLS – It’s often wise to list your core skills so that they stand out from your work history. Sauron’s skills show a lot of promise. With the exception of a few details, he’s in the sweet spot for a corporate executive position. However, the unvarnished description fails to include the kind of key words that hiring managers look for when plucking good resumes from the mass of mediocre ones. My proposed rewording appears just beneath each core skill.

Core Skills:

• Plotting the Destruction of All Goodness and Light
  • Long Range Strategic Planning
• Tyrannizing the Land of Mordor Until It’s the Apotheosis of Depravity and Evil
  • Organizational Transformation
• Forging Wretched Scum into an Unstoppable Army Capable of Slaughtering All My Enemies
  • Workforce Planning and Development
• Imbuing Undead Monsters With the Powers of Sorcery
  • Professional Growth of High-Potential Employees
• Crafting Magical Rings With Which to Enslave Inferior Creatures
  • Innovative Product Development
• Showing No Mercy
  • Aggressive Negotiation

WORK HISTORY – Work history can be a tricky area. Fortunately, Sauron was a high achiever. The strict details of Sauron’s most recent jobs show strong capabilities, but companies need to see how those capabilities relate to their organizational challenges. A slight re-casting is in order.

Dark Lord of Mordor, 2942 through the End of the Third Age

• Fortified Mordor into a virtually impregnable stronghold
  • Identified and mitigated the organization’s strategic vulnerabilities
• Fielded mighty armies of foul creatures
  • Mobilized a multi-national workforce to execute company directives
• Killed thousands upon thousands of pathetic humans
  • Carried out a successful campaign to deny competitors critical resources
• Subjugated various ghastly tribes
  • Executed hostile takeovers of smaller organizations with complementary capabilities
• Poisoned the minds of arrogant sorcerers and kings
  • Led a successful disinformation and PR campaign against key competitors

Necromancer of Dol Guldur, 1050 – 2942

• Brought undead monsters back into existence
  • Recruited key personnel critical to future organizational success
• Destroyed the city of Minas Ithil
  • Achieved 100% market share in an important geographical area
• Remained undetected by wizards for almost 800 years
  • Implemented a successful corporate counter-espionage program
• Escaped to Mordor as planned when attacked by nosy wizards and elves
  • Developed a comprehensive disaster recovery plan that ensured uninterrupted operations when an actual disaster occurred

WORK HISTORY CHALLENGES – Now Sauron reaches one of the most difficult problems in resume writing—how to deal with a gap in employment history. This doesn’t show the kind of drive that a corporate employer is looking for, and a little spin is required here.

Shapeless and Dormant Evil, Beginning of Third Age – 1050

• Floated insubstantial while followers continued to perpetrate evil in the name of Sauron
  • Volunteered without compensation to provide inspiration and moral support to those advancing industry goals

LENGTHY WORK HISTORY – When a job-seeker has a long work history it’s a bad idea to show every job in detail. Since Sauron has existed since the beginning of time, his work history is longer than most. An abbreviated explanation of his prior work is still a little too specific, so generalization is in order.

Mighty and Powerful Lord of Evil, First Age and Second Age

• Titles included “The Dread Abomination,” “The Abhorred,” “The Nameless Enemy,” “Ring Maker,” and “Base Master of Treachery.”
  • Worked in various positions of increasing responsibility
• Notable achievements included:  
  • Served as lieutenant to the world’s ultimate evil being  
    • Served as second-in-command to the chief executive of the industry-leading organization
  • Served and then betrayed the gods  
    • Secured intellectual property and then spun off into an independent operation  
  • Created the Rings of Power
    • Developed unique and market-changing products

I won’t go on with Education, Special Awards, Publications, and so forth. You get the idea.

So as I sit down to write my resume, I’ll keep all this in mind. If it’s possible to create a compelling resume for The Dread Abomination, it should be possible to create one for a sarcastic, soda-swilling doomsayer. Who’s good at saying no.

Photo from B.S. Lambalgen – http://juima.org