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Career Corner: Elegant Pizza, Elegant Resumes

By Meg, who pretends to be a pizzaiola. Find the entire Career Corner series here.


From Flickr user eyeliam via Creative Commons I read this interview with Matthew May, the author of In Pursuit of Elegance, a few weeks ago, and it’s been rolling around in my brain since then. In May’s book, he defines something as elegant when it is both unusually simple and surprisingly powerful.

One of the reasons I’ve enjoyed thinking about this interview is because I love how the mirror of elegance can be held up to anything with interesting results. Lately, I’ve been thinking about elegance in terms of pizza and resumes.

There are few pizza places out here in Portland, Oregon that are really, really good. However, most people agree that Ken’s Artisan Pizza is the best. The crust is gorgeous. The sauce is fantastic but not too showy. The cheese and other, high quality toppings are simply and perfectly paired – no meat-lovers supreme here. I love this pizza because I can taste each component; there is no overload of ingredients, and each element (crust, sauce, cheese, toppings) can shine. It’s simple and powerful – an elegant pizza.

I feel like one of the key goals for a resume is for it to fit into this definition of elegance; a resume should be powerful and simple.

I’m sure you’ve heard that a resume (and cover letter) needs to be tailored to each position you apply to. This is where the elegance comes in. Because not only does it need to have all of essential, tailored information, but it needs to not have any extra stuff.

One way to do this is to sit down with each job posting you’re interested in. Look at the list of required skills, responsibilities, and qualifications. Can each of those points be easily found on your resume? Because the folks who do hiring are not going to search, infer, assume, or guess that you have qualifications if they’re not spelled out clearly on your resume. Similarly, they don’t have time to wade through a lot of excess information to figure out if you’re a good candidate for the job.

This is where a master resume (see Chapter 8 of The Idealist Guide, Presenting Yourself on Paper) can be incredibly useful. Put your master resume next to the job description and get rid of any bullet points that don’t match the job requirements. Obviously, if you’re left with few to no bullet points, the job may not be a good fit. But if you’ve got a good number of points left, go through them and make sure all of the bullet points add value to your resume from the perspective of each job’s hiring manager. If not, they’re just fluff. The subtractive process through which your resume is tailored to a specific position is key to making it effective and elegant.

So for both pizza and resumes, the ultimate goal is to allow each individual element to shine while creating a powerful impression of the whole. Granted, one is much better with a glass of red wine…but that’s another post.

Got any other resume tips? Or pizza suggestions? Feel free to leave a comment.