Transcript
Description:
This attorney resume Harrison Barnes is reviewing appears to have issues with lacking focus. He has a couple of modifications on this resume as it has a lot of different things. Putting a lot of stuff on your resume detracts from the main message of whether you can do the job and if you can do the job long term. Here are the things he edited on this resume:
- Lengthy description
- Irrelevant experience
- Too much personal information
Transcript:
There's not a lot of extraneous information on there, but then you get into this one and then this one where all this other stuff is coming up.
And so a lot of what the smartest attorneys do is they reduce the, they, they reduce things to that are they, skills could say skills. And then you can put all this stuff here and just put all this like this. No. And all of a sudden you've got a much cooler resume here.
So that's how I would handle that. Everybody wants to toot their own horn, when someone sees this, I say, this person's really confident. This is cool. And then, and then I just see this and, you can put a little bit more information here, but you don't really need a lot more.
And emphasizing things like, if you just say moot court, like this person got, which is okay, then you say is that all this person did in law school. But if you don't see that you see nothing, you just think, wow, no, this is fine. They went to LA and who knows what they did, they might talk about journalists and stuff in an interview, but you don't know that.
Okay. I hope this is helping people, cause this is just a lot of information, but I don't know what this thing up here with Zika is easy, but it's not anything to do. I think that's our someone that works here is Google account, or we downloaded this from upside that, okay. So this legal administrative law school talents and skills.
Okay. Okay. This needs to come off this stuff about calm approach, empathy and stuff, not necessarily experience same thing I would just say e-discovery specialist.
Like we talked about earlier and then just, discuss some of the stuff you've done. And and if you worked for one employer, you've worked for, that, and then you see that and then 1999, 2000. I like this. This is by the way, someone asked a question earlier, what you do if you've worked at a bunch of employers, and this is actually a very good way of dealing with that.
If you worked with a bunch of flyers, you can put down all the different employers you've worked at and do it this way. And so I actually liked this. I think that is a good way of doing that. I would you have to be careful. And cause they're talking about commercial law attorney as well.
So I would just say worked in a variety of firms, worked in three separate law firms in Boston. And then I would probably because this person's been doing this, I would concentrate on this I would have to pleadings and that I would just say and then I would try to get all this stuff out here, out of here to drafts for litigation, bankruptcies, and other matters.
They're just show locked clerk. You don't need to say can you think about that? That's what it is. It's you're just a law clerk. You don't even talk about what you bet. You don't need to put this in there. And you don't need to put this in there. There was a break. It looks like 2000 what? 1390. Okay. That's fine. So if you're applying to schools and stuff, that's fine, but I would just say. If you're applying for legal skills or illegal job, I would say something along the lines of between 2004 and 2000 and 15 or whatever I was working in a a high school or working in different jobs.
The problem is all this stuff everything that's going on here is really Starting to detract from the legal message. So if you want a legal job you're going to need to really concentrate on this stuff. If this person's trying to get back into the law if you want another type of job Then then this legal experience shouldn't even be on here, but if you want to get back into the law and you want to eat discovery from poem or something, which you may you could write a cover letter discussing that.
And then in the cover letter, you can discuss the fact that you get all this different stuff. But this, the problem with this is a very common one and I'm not surprised That I'm receiving this resume because I think a lot of the resumes that people send me to review are very similar to this and they wonder why they're not getting positions the problem with any resume that the resume needs to show a focus.
So you need to have focus. A focus is very important for any resume. So this person and in terms of what they're doing here they, it doesn't really show a lot of focus. It shows that they were an attorney for 10 years at three different firms, which is great. And and and they did bankruptcy and they did all this stuff, so that's good.
You've covered your body 11. Okay. And then you would want some description of what you did as a need discovery specialist there. And but the problem is they're just not th there's just a lot of different things. Here, it looks like the person's more interested in being a teacher and a high school leader, or I guess then here, it looks like they're working on teaching and then they're working a math teacher and all these different things, which I guess they did before going to law school.
So that's probably not maybe that's probably not necessary to put that in there. I would think if this person had education experience, like as an education attorney, they would be good, but here they're really they're there in terms of what. Their experiences could for they're just they're.
Th they're really set up to be an attorney working in and doing e-discovery or something litigation related and all these other things that are on their resume while interesting. Aren't. Necessarily going to lead anywhere, like all this education and training is not related. If somebody has time to go and take classes in I certainly would love to take a class in the history of mathematics and all these different things, but these aren't related to school law.
These are not really anything here related to practicing law. So I would take all this stuff off and then 1991, this person is definitely has a lot of years left that they could be practicing law if they want it to. So I would leave it like that.
And this person, by the way marketable, if they if they want to do, e-discovery if that's what they've been doing. And then this person here. They, again 1986, 98, that's fine. And by the way, it's pretty just practice into their eighties. In some even longer. So I think it's perfectly fine to have that sort of stuff.
Hood college, Maryland. Oh, so this actually wasn't a degree. Okay. They got their BA in 1986. Okay. This thing just goes on and on. So you can take this out. So you did that and then all these certifications they're obviously going to be admitted to Massachusetts. I don't think you get that.
Anything that's unrelated to practicing law. Probably should come out this, these are this locations these are related to practicing law, but I don't know that they're necessary. I don't know that this is necessary. This was a good resume by the way, but it's just, you have to remember that people that are hiring you.
Aren't necessarily interested in that. So this is a common one putting Mensa on your resume that's probably not necessary. It is cute to put on jeopardy. I liked that. I would don't think that's necessarily, I like the singing calculus and I like this produce it action plate.
So this is all very good. These are good things. And let me just see if we have the emissions and so that, that kind of and then this all needs to be Just contestant.
Jeopardy performed, sang a cardigan.
you're saying, I should say, directed, produced by the high school art school. I think you'd probably get the idea about all this but you just want to shorten all this. And so the big thing that you guys need to discover or understand is when I'm gonna when When a law firm is looking at your resume or an illegal employer, they're really most concerned about whether or not they think he can do the job and whether or not they can keep doing the job long term.
Put all this other stuff is detracting from your main message, which is, that you may be able to, that you can do the work. And in the more that kind of stuff is on there, the more it's going to hurt you. Recommend everyone to go through this exercise and see, because here, when now I look at this, actually this person is an eDiscovery specialist when I look at the prior resume.
But I see as all this stuff that attracts me from. Being interested in the person because it just looks like they're really not fit for practicing law. And I wouldn't even put secondary school certificate. I would just put three here in English. A chemistry minor. And then now the person looks like a litigator that may have taken 15 years off.
No one cares about that. They'll ask about that. I would talk to this person. You can do e-discovery, but if you start seeing all this other stuff that was on there before, the problem is that the person starts looking they have all these other outside interests and they're just going to detract are not going to be manageable.
The question about Mensa and stuff. When people put that on, that's just saying basically I'm really smart. But it turned all the trainers are smart. You just don't want that. And these, this person, you can, all the person, all the personal stuff about the person comes through with us, they look interesting and fun.
Their their relevant education is there. And all of this other information they think is necessary. Isn't there. So it's can remember when I was younger or even to this day, I guess I'm going to be completely honest here. When I would get in an argument with a girlfriend or something and everything that ever happened, it would be brought up and it would be made an issue.
And pretty soon, like issue is, don't feel like you love me or whatever you got a real issue, but but that all gets obfuscated and. You left a towel on the floor, you didn't do the dishes, you didn't you forgot to put away the Manet's and these things I feel disrespected when that happens.
So that's the issue instead of you're, I dunno, whatever. But so people will put a lot of things in there. They think are relevant, but this is all for this particular resume. This is really all that's relevant. With this person, they don't need to have all this other information and and this, and then if someone asks, what did you do between 2000 and 2016?
You can say I was a teacher and now I want to come back to practice a teacher in high school principal, and I want to come. And you might even put in a person teacher in high school principal,
a
2000\. Expand, something like that, then perfectly honest. And and then this is this person's ready to be an e-discovery specialist. And then you can just say, programs so forth. But the thing a lot of people are missing is they're missing. And the resumes is they're missing focus and everybody here, you guys need to work on doing whatever you can to To get as much focus as you possibly can on your resumes and to look very focused.
And everybody does you come in and take a quick break for two minutes to get some more coffee, and then I will come back and we'll do this other resume. We'll just keep working through these. As long as people want to stick around, I'll give it everything I got. So give me a few minutes.
All right, let's keep going. Let me just see if there's any quick questions I can answer for anyone here since everyone's sticking around It says you're only halfway through the cluster resume. It does look like I'm only halfway through that resumes. Yeah, I'm working through all these as quickly as I can.
But I will try to get through I'm just gonna power through all these for everyone, because this is helpful. This will and hopefully if you did send your resume, I'm gonna. Definitely do everything I can to get through it today. So I blocked off the day for this, or have more time. And I hope this advice is helpful for everyone.
And to continue giving advice and I, and anybody that is watching this, I do commend you because you're going to learn new stuff with each resume which is pretty cool. You'll just continually learn more and more because every resume is different and I'm showing you how I think about it.
And then also how law firms think about it and the way we're thinking about and talking about it is very relevant for anyone. That's trying to get, a position. Okay. So all this stuff for the Bard missions again, does not know necessary is not necessary to go on top. You don't need that and it should go at the bottom and and you just, you would just say New Jersey bar and you don't even have to say the date.
If you just, everything, remember attorneys are paid to just communicate information as quickly as possible. And without a lot of extra information. So I'm going to take that off. And let me see here and it doesn't have to be professional experience, just experience see, have all this other information here.
Oh, representative clients now. That's actually very good. I liked that. But let's go here. So we have let's see here, city of Newark. Huh.
Okay, let me see. Let's take the litigation process. Yeah. So again, like a lot of this language and so forth always needs to be cleaned up. So the things that are good about this resume to your, by the way, this person has a lot of employment stability. And they've been employed at the same place for quite a while.
So I liked that. I like this person was prosecutor. Okay. Now what are they doing? Okay. They're doing litigation's so that's the same. And heroin. I don't know if this is a law firm or what it is, and maybe we just made it up for the person okay. For you. Okay. Okay. So this is the person who's been at some good firms.
Okay, so let's talk about this. So this, the way they do things with the edge location is good. So this is good. How that's done. I liked that there's nothing fancy about that. Now they're talking about their representative clients, so I don't know exactly what that means. But let me just see here.
This may be actually the person's own law firm or no senior associate attorney. Okay. So here's, what's important about this resume that I wanted to bring to everyone's attention. So this person like you have to read through these resumes sometimes very carefully. The practice concentrates in title 59 defense and defensive employment related matters. Especially in defense, public enemy, sonically defensive claims involving federal news Rico and an angel that's discrimination.
How about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So this person actually has a very niche skill and this person. And is marketable and I would not have picked that up based on the resume and the way the resume reads. And by the way, you need to make sure that you always run the proofreading software. This person, what they typically do is they specialize and municipal employment defense.
And and because it's so basically, defending entities against defending public entities. So all you need to say is, specialize in defending public entities,
public holidays, public entities, public actually
yeah. Public entities municipalities and so forth.
And appointment
discrimination.
So if I saw this I w I, this resume honestly, would other, civil rights. Civil rights related something along those lines, this resume would jump out at me and I would be all over this person. I would want to work with them. The reason is because this is a very niche practice area.
People are suing public entities and so forth all the time. And and. And you could certainly do it. And this is actually a very marketable skill and there would be people that would be interested in that there's practice areas. There's firms that specialize in doing municipal related work and so forth.
And that's very important. The same thing here, the person did public entities work here, and they also did that. They also worked for. Oh, I think here. So this is an exceptional resume. This person is very marketable, even though they're in 1999 graduate, they were doing general commercial litigation at a major law firm in New York city.
They wouldn't be marketable probably because it's just so difficult to get a job. But at the same time this person, because of their scale set is and they have so much experience and it's don't know. It's niche this person can definitely get a job.
There's no question in my mind that this is a marketable attorney and it's basically the same thing here and it's, it's the same thing here. This can be much shorter. And and then this is similar here, so this, this, and so now everyone knows what this person does.
Then the law offices of Linda Burman. And this is there. So suddenly this resume becomes much stronger. You can say a little bit more here, but everything about this person is public entity defense and and that is a very important thing. I don't know if this is this person's clients or not, or what they are, but and this is good too.
I like this report on uncovered decisions putting that at the end too. So this is a good resume. It's just but the problem is. If I saw this and I was looking at resumes and I look at tons and tons of resumes per day. I might not have picked up on all this. If I was like not a alert, I wouldn't have picked up, but this is actually a very marketable attorney.
And the reason is this is Marco. This attorney marketable Hernie is very marketable because of focus. If I was a, if I was a municipality or a law firm that defendant municipalities this is the exact kind of person I would want to know about because they had a lot of experience doing all this sort of stuff.
I might just kick out this kind of stuff too about negligence and just put other experience, maybe other experience something along those lines. Law firm experience, I don't know, but but this can be, this is a very focused resume, so you can see how you can take something and it might actually be nice to have a description of description of the case, if it's a, if it's municipal related, so this could be something like, a police officer teed up somebody in a wheelchair.
I don't know, if you have these cases, report and report decisions. Yeah. These are all like townships and so forth. So having to description because what'll happen is you can imagine how many cities and stuff are getting sued for police misconduct and people's civil rights being violated and all this sort of stuff.
So the more this attorney is able to bring out their expertise in this the better. And so if I saw this, I'd be like all over this person. I would love it. But if, but what I saw initially, Was not that it was something else. And you need to bring out your experience in this, by the way.
I don't know why it's not something along those lines, but this is a public entity, defense attorney, great attorney great experience. Definitely marketable. It's just, there's so much going on the resume that they wouldn't have been able to get a job before.
