Does Mark Zuckerberg Need A Résumé?: Part 2

Of course he doesn't! I continue to be amazed at how talented individuals follow the herd of job seekers rushing to get their résumés in front of the eyes of a recruiter. They spend hours on end trying to create the perfect résumé or they pay someone to do it for them. Either way, the end result is that they are just copying everyone else who is vying for the same job posting. Whatever happened to the Jack Welch philosophy: "At GE, “strong” meant a business was #1 or #2 in its market. If it wasn’t, the managers had to fix it, sell it, or as a last resort, close it."? Shouldn't job seekers apply that philosophy to themselves when deciding on whether they should apply to a job? Sadly, the majority of job seekers spend more time modifying their résumés to fit the myriad job descriptions they find instead of investing that time into building their expertise (if they have one to begin with).

In reality, applying to jobs is old school for the talented and high-performing individuals. It's only for the individuals who desire to be employees - not service providers. If you're providing a service to a company that will add to its bottom line, then you don't need a strong résumé - you need a strong pitch! Why? Because you will need to speak directly to a Decision Maker - not a recruiter. When Mark Zuckerberg was 22 years old, he would have robbed the business world of his genius had he simply applied for a job. Any company he worked for would have stifled and smothered his creative juices and entrepreneurial spirit. So now, instead of writing résumés and applying online to jobs, he creates jobs that other people have to apply to. The lesson to be learned is that if you are only relying on a résumé to communicate your employment value, then you'll just be stuck in the middle of the pack with the rest of the job seeker herd. Service providers don't need résumés because they can show real-time business metrics of the value gained by the users of their services. While résumés focus on your past accomplishments, service providers make pitches to address solutions for the current and future challenges facing a company.

Talent needs no résumé, it only needs to be recognized and appreciated. Therefore, it needs only to seek out the individuals who can properly assess and value it. Sadly, that won't happen for many talented job seekers caught in the throes of the corporate recruitment process...