Your résumé, of course, is an advertisement. The item for sale is your productive capital. Your résumé is also a sales pitch—Here’s what I have to offer; now you must decide if I’ll provide you a successful ROI. But here’s the thing we sometimes forget: What you’re “offering” with your résumé is more than the sum of your accomplishments. More than your recommendations. More than your degrees, your awards, your honors.

What you’re offering is also your credibility. Because what you’re really telling the employer when you submit your résumé is, I affirm the truth of this résumé and I rest my professional integrity on it. If I’m lying, fire me. If I’m distorting the facts, fire me. But you can trust me.

Imagine this scene: I’m a recruiter, and I have a hundred résumés from a hundred applicants for a single position. I’m narrowing down the applicants to a list of interviewees. What’s one of the first things that gets you thrown into the “NO” pile? Your language seems a bit too colorful, a bit too dramatic; a few facts seem irregular, or don’t seem to align; in short, I’m not buying your story, and I really don’t want to waste precious interview time—my time—with empirical questions to fact-check your achievements. Rejected.

Know this: recruiters are pragmatic. They don’t want to get burned. If they know someone’s credible, they will have a much easier time hiring the person. And so someone else gets the job, someone who will offer the company a lower ROI.

And who bears the brunt of that loss?

You, the man or woman with the idiosyncratic, even bizarre, career path…because, well, the recruiter wouldn’t give you the benefit of the doubt.

You, the recent college grad whose job experience doesn’t align with his GPA…because, well, despite excellent grades, you decided to keep that “menial” summer job instead of experiencing that wonderful unpaid internship in the District of Columbia (never mind the fact that if you didn’t keep your job, you, broke and sans diploma, would have to drop out of school).

And you, the recruiter, and you, the enterprise, who miss out on a valuable, intelligent, and reliable employee.

But what if you could provide, in your résumé, evidence that verifies your story—that demonstrates your credibility—and gives the recruiter a more comprehensive, but succinct, presentation of your story? It seems to me that you’d have a résumé fit for this decade.

More than that: a step ahead on other applicants. In short: a CareerScribe.com profile.

CareerScribe.com's Achievement Tracker. Got a degree from Wright State University?

Scan your degree, upload it to your profile, and prove it in style.

From our site….

“With CareerScribe, you have a comprehensive resource to store, document, track, manage, develop, structure, share and succeed (and you can still use the resume).

“CareerScribe lets you keep, in one place, everything that is important to your career. Like references, performance reviews, diplomas, testimonials, your ‘work’ portfolio, presentations, volunteer work, job descriptions, and more. If it’s important and helpful (and something that you can, and want to keep), store it.”

Here’s the simple truth: a recruiter must believe your narrative before he can believe in it. So don’t just tell him what you’ve done; show him. Scan that reference, that email, that diploma. Give life to your résumé, your profile. Give it sincerity. Give it truth.

That simple, initial display of credibility can go a long, long way.