My mentor recommended adding a general career description - not sure?

Submitted by Jochen Sulhanen
in
Career Management

Hi,

I am applying to a new job. My mentor shared his documents with me and he said that I should add a general description of who I am.

I am not sure if I should follow that advice. I have a cover letter (listened to the excellent advice) and a CV (believe it or not: one page).

Adding a third document seems unnecessary. It would be something like:

"experienced professional, strength.. make vision happen". I respect my mentor and I respect this community.


Any guidance on a third page?

Submitted by John Rosenau on Thursday April 18th, 2013 1:03 pm

I would leave it at 2 documents.
John

Submitted by Matt Palmer on Thursday April 18th, 2013 5:47 pm

The golden question with *any* advice -- career management or otherwise -- is to ask, "why?".  I'd be asking your mentor why he or she recommends having it.  If the advice makes sense, then do it, otherwise, don't.
My advice is: don't do it.  To answer the "why?" question, I'd say that it's irrelevant to the hiring manager's decision-making process as to whether or not to bring you in for an interview.  The only thing your resume and cover letter are trying to achieve is to land you the interview, so anything that doesn't further that goal is unnecessary.
For the issue of "what are my career plans?", in 99.9% of cases, I can see what you career trajectory looks like based on what jobs you've had and the job you're appliying for now.  In the 0.1% of cases where that won't be obvious, you can address it with a line in your cover letter (personal example below).  The rest of what you'd put in a "career description" -- and everything you stated in your example ("experienced professional, strength.. make vision happen") -- is just overly broad waffle.  Who *wouldn't* want to describe themselves as "making vision happen"?  If nobody would ever write the opposite of what you're thinking of writing, then it's wasted words.  By the time you take out all those wasted words from a "career description", you're left with a blank page.  If you want to highlight your ability to "make vision happen", *show* me, through your accomplishments, that you do that.  Anyone can say, "I make vision happen", so I just ignore it.  Worst case, the hiring manager is feeling a bit vicious, and they'll ask you in the interview for a specific example of how you "make vision happen", and then you're in a whole other weird world.
My personal example of having to describe my career trajectory occured when I got out of IT for a while to drive trains.  When I decided I'd gotten all I wanted out of the train driving, I decided I wanted to go back into IT (as a manager, rather than an individual contributor).  Since a resume that says "sysadmin, developer, sysadmin, sysadmin, TRAIN DRIVER!" would be an eyebrow-raiser for anyone, I decided I needed to explain that.  I did it with a single sentence in my cover letters, along the lines of "After a career sabbatical, during which I spent time driving passenger trains, my passion for IT, and managing a team of IT professionals, has been renewed".  I didn't get any knockbacks based on that, and got the job offers I was seeking.

Submitted by Martin Culbert on Sunday April 21st, 2013 8:38 pm

For your mentor, DO create the overview document and I would only send it with an application if it were going to that mentor.
Manager Tool recommendations are well reasoned and are most valuable because they are better thought out than what "we have always done." I do have one type of resume for friends. I have another for professionals.