In-House Counsel

Why The Anti-Résumé Provokes Such Strong Reactions

Who you are affects how you react to what I write.

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Top view of stack of resume files,magnifier on black surface.Concept of reviewing resume applictaions,searching for new employees

(via Getty Images)

Several weeks ago, I suggested that, when people draft their résumés, they should be required simultaneously to draft their anti-résumés, highlighting all the failures in their lives — awards they didn’t win, clerkships they didn’t obtain, firms that didn’t hire them, trials they lost, and the rest.

The reaction to this column was fierce, with some readers saying the idea of writing an anti-résumé was a terrible one, sure to depress people and likely to cause suicides. How could I have written such dangerous words?

On the other hand, many people reacted to the column differently: “That was the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time! Thanks for writing it!”

Why the divide?

The audience at Above the Law, of course, contains many categories of people.  Some of those people are high-achieving folks who went to the best law schools, served on law reviews, landed fancy clerkships, and are now partners at the finest firms in the country.

The vast majority of readers, of course, don’t fall into that category.

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Who you are affects how you react to what I write.

I wrote the anti-résumé column as a joke. As an in-house lawyer, I’m bombarded by résumés of people telling me how great they are: I should hire them for in-house jobs; I should retain them for big litigation; and so on. Sitting in my place, you too might think that folks should be required to write an anti-résumé: The whole world is insisting that it’s great, and it’s not really that great. Wouldn’t it be funny if people had to tell the truth?

On the other hand, if you’re consumed by the idea of professional “success” — good grades, fancy clerkship, fancy job — and you’ve never attained that traditional success, then you might not view the idea of an anti-résumé as a cute joke. Rather, you might be bemoaning your lack of “success” in life and dismayed by the thought that you should be required to wallow in your self-evident “failures.” If you had to draft an anti-résumé, that could drive you over the edge — to drink, to drugs, to suicide. How could I have proposed such a thing?

I surely hope that the piece of my readership that I didn’t hear from falls into a different category — a well-adjusted middle. I assume that my average reader is average — went to an average school, performed about average, and went on to an average career. But if that hypothetical reader is emotionally secure and well-adjusted, then that reader should be satisfied with his or her life: Success is not, after all, a function of grades or clerkships or partnerships.

Success is, more or less, leaving the world a better place for your having lived in it.

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With luck, you get to live your threescore years and ten. During that time, did you improve the lives of your friends and family? Of your community or the world at large? Did you appreciate the good times as you lived them? Did you help those in need?

I think — I hope — that emotionally well-adjusted readers smiled at my joke about the anti-résumé.

But the reactions to the column made me more sensitive to the spectrum of readers who visit Above the Law.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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