By Gayle Howard, Australian Representative CDI – Top Margin Career Marketing
I’d never really noticed the differences before. I’d been writing resumes since 1990, had purchased many résumé books from the US over the years, and although I realised our style of writing was not the same, it was never an issue – the books were used primarily as a source of “job descriptions” rather than a “how to” of resume writing!
Then the Internet gained prominence and the world was forever changed!
The realisation dawned on me through an initial smattering of emails when I first launched my business onto the web, growing quickly to hordes of tiresome “lessons”. These communications typically fell into two categories – the well meaning, friendly, yet patronising emails from American visitors to the website offering me a little tip “there’s some words spelt incorrectly on your site”. Or the other, more aggressive, and unfortunately unnecessarily smug visitors – “Harrumph!” they’d snigger (well I’m not sure about the harrumph – but artistic licence makes the story better) “Why would I get YOU to write a résumé – you can’t even SPELL!”
And then it hit me. The world, despite being a really big place, was getting smaller – certainly in terms of communications anyway. My Australian site had been launched, not only to my intended Australian audience, but also for potential customers around the world. To combat this problem the site now carries a disclaimer – a little note to explain to visitors that yes, despite sharing the English language, we spell differently – in fact do a lot of things differently! It’s not wrong, it’s just different. The emails about spelling errors have fortunately now dissipated, and even if visitors haven’t purchased a resume from me, perhaps I widened their horizons a little – that there are other ways of doing things – not wrong, just different!
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had to adapt too! I remember the first resume I received for a client in the US a few years back. What a buzz! What panic! I changed the spell checker to English – US, and then promptly queried every word because I refused to believe it! I changed the paper size, I sent the document to American friends so they could check my 32nd proofread, and to ensure it had the right “look”. Boy, that résumé must have been the most time consuming, non cost-effective document I’d ever written in my life! Fortunately, things have moved on; I’m not the least bit phased about the differences writing for US, Australian, European or Asian audiences now – but those early days sure were a challenge!
Which brings me to you, my colleagues. If it happened to me, you can be assured, it will happen to you. Do you know the differences in Australian resumes or European resumes? Will you be prepared when your clients call on your services? It’s not as unusual as you may think. Australia has a rapidly accelerating IT sector. It’s possible your next client may be seeking an expatriate assignment here and want something “Australianised” for local job hunting. They may be an Australian living in America and about to return home. They may have married an Australian. There are a multitude of reasons you could be exposed to our country, or for that matter to the European market.
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