The elusive 'perfect' resume

So, do you have a resume we could take a look at?”

I must’ve heard it at least 10 times as I roamed the Princeton Office of Career Services’ Career Fair last week. This is a simple, but definitely ritualized, exchange process: Employers gave me free pens, stickers, pamphlets and, I swear, a whoopee cushion, and I gave them a piece of paper that was supposed to sum up exactly who I am, what I do and all the worth (or perhaps lack thereof) that I have accumulated as a potential employee during my four years at Princeton. But after skimming this piece of paper for some 10 to 20 seconds, all one recruiting representative could muster up was, “So, you’re studying anthropology? What’s that like?”

If you read the opinion section often, it would have been ridiculously difficult to not notice column after column covering the hot post-summer topic of summer internships and jobs. Naturally, resumes come up in the conversation — columnists weigh whether a certain internship would look better on paper than another or they examine the true value of a workplace as an undergraduate. But let me say something to you younger readers, just in case you haven’t figured it out: That piece of paper says little more about you than your name and how well you can spin a description of how you spent the last three summers. For that reason, planning out the future content of one’s resume at the beginning of freshman year is ultimately not the most beneficial of activities.

Now here’s the time for a quick confession. My belief that one’s resume (and yes, the accompanying cover letter, as well) only says so much about a person has not prevented me from partaking in the current campus-wide craze among seniors. I too sit in front of a computer for hours on end, perfecting margins, finding the perfect verb to both accurately and impressively describe what I do at my current part-time job and testing every font from Abadi to Verdana — because, of course, we all know that if I settle with, let’s say, Cambria, I am going to be living in a box in the dusty streets of Tulare, California. I likewise have no shame in emailing my potential final product to my more experienced friends and acquaintances to have them criticize which bullet points I used when indenting a brief summary of my summer research in Bombay.

My point is not that resumes are unnecessary or detrimental to your application process — unless you’re competing against me for a job, in which case, don’t worry your little head about making a resume at all (Disclaimer: I’m kidding ... kind of). Rather, what I think is necessary to come away from this with is the fact that a resume cannot, and should not be assumed to, measure personal worth or the value of experiences.

Of course employers know this. If they didn’t, why would they have interviews? But I’m sincerely baffled by the impossible mission to construct the “perfect resume.” Personally, this is something I only began thinking about myself when the job hunt started this fall. But you know what? Looking down the sporadic list of my so-called “achievements” and “relevant experience,” I couldn’t be prouder. Artistic director, eating club officer, independent researcher and editor come out on the page. Though I recognize that it’s not the most impressive self-promotion that the recruiters have ever seen, I see that I’ve been pursuing those things that I’ve loved in college all along, and it hasn’t quite screwed me over yet. No stress over what will get me a job come the end of my time at Princeton. No forcing relevance to a career path that may or may not change throughout the rest of my life. Just pure joy in what I’ve been doing all along.

Admittedly, it’s been a fortunate coincidence that my passion happens to involve forms of leadership in the organizations that I’m most enthusiastic about. Nevertheless, the micromanagement of one’s life based on a single sheet of paper is not going to maximize someone’s college experience. When I glance down my own resume right before I post it on TigerTracks or employer websites, I remember the unforgettable feeling of pickups in my club, performing (and getting iced) on a stage, generating an actual academic debate with something I’ve written — even if it was just between my adviser and me — and constantly being proud of the work I’m doing, without the anxiety of making it applicable to anything but the impact I will have here on this campus. Regardless of its necessity as I attempt to join the workforce, that revered list of responsibilities, roles or initiatives cannot reproduce any of that.

Joey Barnett is an anthropology major from Tulare, Calif. He can be reached at jbarnett@princeton.edu.