by adowling on March 5, 2010
I don’t care who you are or what you’ve done in your career; the functional resume is a horrible idea.
My brother-in-law was recently laid off from his job, a few months before tying the note I might add, so being the good sister-in-law in HR, I offered to help. Bless his heart, he forwarded me his resume and I all I could do was sigh.
My friend Dawn Hrdlica wrote a post over on Fistful of Talent in January about the death of the Functional Resume.
The Functional Resume, known more affectionately as “the confusing one” and “the manipulator” died today after a long steady decline. The age of Functional Resume was unknown, since he refused to notate any of his works or accomplishments chronologically.
Functional Resume, born by professors and consultants, was a friend to job seekers convinced (by the same professors and consultants) that their experience was too limiting to be forthright. Functional Resume was an outspoken advocate of praying on the naivety of candidates; candidates taught by generations past, that diverse, non-traditional career paths were shameful and that wordsmithing, trickery and deception were better paths into recruiting gatekeepers.
Sadly, Functional Resume drew his last breath with the evolution of work-life balance, dual career paths, the emergence of Merger and acquisitions, and the economic crash of 2008-09. These events lead recruiters to simply not care if a resume showed a less than steady chronological workflow, since it was a sign of the times.
Functional Resume will be buried alongside of facsimile, typewriter, telegraph and dictaphone.
Every time I see one I cringe; even if it’s written well and covers all the bases. I don’t want to guess what skills and/or accomplishment go with what role.
And to anyone that’s telling job seekers to use the Function Resume, stop it.
by adowling on March 2, 2010
Like many US workers, I receive health insurance via my employer; at a subsidized rate via a Cafeteria Plan. Over the past several weeks I’ve come to realize that insurance companies, for lack of a better and more professional word, suck.
My company switched from Cigna to Anthem Blue Cross this year and with it came new coverage’s and different rate plans. What we weren’t told was that all the pre-authorizations had to be done again; all those expensive prescriptions had to be reexamined to make sure they were approved by Anthem.
Here’s my frustration with the process of insurance companies. If I’m on a medication, for example, that I take daily that helps me function as a human being should and my doctor prescribed this medication that has no generic form, what place does an Insurance Company have to question that prescription and its diagnosis? Why do I have to jump through hoops to get my own prescription filled because an insurance company has to pay extra for a drug that helps me function?
Another example, a female employee with intense pain in her lower abdomen wishes to have a hysterectomy rather than going through the pain and lost work time of essentially taking one part at a time. She goes to her doctor in January and, after asking the Insurance Company for permission, the doctors says they can’t do it but if she wants to come back in May they can. Apparently the Insurance Company her spouse has only approves total hysterectomies after the first quarter of the year.
A truly personal example of the dysfunction that is our American Healthcare System, I visited the doctor a few years ago with intense pain, doubled over kind of pain. Confused as to what it might be, my doctor wants to run several tests to rule out a few things. The first thing he did was run it through the insurance company to see if they’d cover the tests he wanted to run to make sure I didn’t have Liver cancer, Liver. Cancer. I don’t care what the insurance says, run the test man. (I don’t by the way, clean as a whistle)
I understand that insurance companies are businesses and their primary function is to turn a profit. But at what cost? How many Americans that actually have cancer go without that test because their insurance won’t pay for it and they can’t afford it? How many women are enduring multiple surgeries all because the insurance company wouldn’t pay for a hysterectomy in the first quarter of the year?
I don’t know what the fix is for the American Healthcare system. The public option may be it or it may be a complete cluster, who knows. What I do know is that something has to give; the health of Americans should not be in the hands of an insurance company that is only out for a profit. My healthcare options should be between me and my doctor; not me, my doctor, the insurance company, and my employer.
What does this have to do with HR? Nothing really, other than I beg you to do your best to provide the best coverage you can for your employees; and make sure you know what the fine print says.
