Resume “Building”

The Guvnah13 years ago

There comes a time when you have to leave reckless abandon and the glory of your undergraduate years behind, and enter the real world. But if you play your cards right, you should be able to construct a resume that can make you look even more qualified than you actually are. I’m not just talking about executive positions in your fraternity or the student government spots reserved for your house by the Greek political machine. Don’t get me wrong, those things look good, but there is always room for improvement. There are three time-tested ways to drastically strengthen your resume with out actually doing a damn thing. I present to you the three pillars of resume “building.”

Create

So you need an internship, but you never actually held a single position in anything over the last three years. Not a problem. The beauty of being Greek is that the record keeping is pretty limited and chances are the person you need as a reference is one of your pledge brothers. No one actually knows who the philanthropy chair was in the spring of 2008. I’ve seen five guys claim to have been the social chair in the same semester with no consequences. Just make sure to tell whoever the president was at that time to answer their cell phone and confirm anything you lie about. If they refuse, you can always politely remind them of the Cancun Incident of 2009 that you still have pictures of. It’s not blackmail, it’s incentive. References are far easier to obtain when you’ve done lines of blow off a stripper’s ass in a back alley of Bourbon Street with the dude you need one from.

Exaggerate

This should be pretty straight forward. Most employers aren’t going to be able to check the accuracy of anything you claimed to do in college. Anything numerical can easily be rounded up. Just keep it reasonable and make sure there’s no evidence of the truth. If you were president or treasurer, just round up your actual budget to the nearest quarter million. Half that money was probably laundered and mislabeled to pay for booze anyway, so lying about the actual amount is probably the least of your worries. Even if you didn’t actually do anything of importance during you tenure, just “exaggerate” until it’s resume gold. Planning a social takes very little actual work but saying that you “Developed itinerary, coordinated travel logistics, and authored risk management contingency plans for social events with several hundred attendees” sounds pretty mother fucking glorious.

Manipulate (the title)

Every organization has unique titles for very similar positions. The key is to convey inflated importance. The title “Vice President” can be very helpful. Some houses have like six vice presidents. You can be the VP of fucking anything. House Manager? Nope. Vice President of Fraternity Operations. Treasurer? Not enough. I’d go with Vice President of Finance. Social Chair? Too narrow. Vice President of Membership Resources. If VP would be too much of stretch you can always check down to “The Director of _____” title.

Remember, even if it’s dishonest, it’s not lying if your story checks out. To quote Alonzo Harris in Training Day, “It’s not what you know, it’s what you can prove.” And they can’t prove shit.