Hi there everybody! Sorry I didn't give a real article last week. The shortened week after the holidays had be behind the eight ball. To make it up to you I’m putting together a two part series on resumes. The first part that I’ll post today is about five mistakes people make on resumes. I’ll follow up later in the week with the five things you should be doing with your resume. So here goes!!!
1. Uses Inappropriate or Irrelevant Information
When you are writing your resume you are applying for a job. Not posting on E-Harmony. This means that your resume should focus on your career, your skills and why you would be a great candidate. It should not include the following:
- Hobbies
- Family situation
- Age
- Political Affiliation
- Religion
It doesn’t matter how proud you are of your vintage 1950’s Barbie collection - it isn’t relevant. There are three reasons why you shouldn’t put this on here. First, it runs the risk of taking away from the pertinent information on your resume. Second, it is commonly accepted that this is a poor practice and it makes you look like you aren’t up to date – as a bonus if the information is exceptionally odd they will pass it around to others and laugh at you. Finally, you open yourself up to people passing on you because of predisposed notions that are irrelevant to the job. What if a client hates gardeners and thinks that they have no business in the professional world. Putting your hobby on there could really hurt you…
2. Grammatical and Spelling Errors
This one is really important. I mean really important. If you have errors on your resume it makes you look careless, sloppy and stupid. There is really no way around this. However, let’s put this in perspective. One minor error won’t knock you out of contention with most places. However, multiple errors look really bad. People will make the assumption that if you are doing something incredibly important for your own well being and can’t take the time to proofread your resume then you will probably be worse when doing daily correspondence with their clients. This makes you look lazy and sloppy.
Even worse is when you make errors on really important pieces of information. If you misspell the following you are screwed:
- Your name
- The name of the person you are applying to
- Your previous employers
- Your current employer
- The name of your industry (I have a hard time calling someone that applies to me for an inusrance job…)
These types of errors signal and underlying problem in the eyes of an employer and you will have major problems getting an interview.
3. Describes Your Job Duties in Great Detail
This is another major error. Many people put together a resume and underneath their positions of employment they write in great detail every minor job duty that they had. Some of the things included would be:
- Answered the phone daily
- Handled customer complaints
- Assisted customer
When I read things like this I immediately think “No S@$#!” Most reasonable companies can look at your job title and make some basic assumptions about what you did. What they are looking for and what sets you apart is what you accomplished. Give specific details about what you did. If you were a commercial lines account manager and your book of business was heavy in transportation – say it. Give hard and true facts. Two bonus things that go with this:
1. If you have a weird job that doesn’t match the title it is OK to give a basic description. Just make it one bullet point and move on to your accomplishments.
2. Don’t ever, ever, ever write same as above on your resume or just copy the same thing you wrote and paste it in again. I don’t care if you worked as the drive through manager at McDonalds and then Burger King. You should come up with unique information about both positions.
4. It Reads Like a Book
I’m going to let you in on a big secret. People are lazy. More specifically, people who read resumes are lazy. If the information presented on your resume is written in paragraph form and it requires people to take the time to seek out relevant information they will miss it or ignore it altogether.
As a recruiter I can tell you from experience that when I see a resume that looks like a chore to read I have to stop myself, take a deep breath and then try to read it. If I’m busy, tired or under a deadline it runs the risk of me missing something and hitting the delete key.
5. It Blatantly Inflates Your Titles and Duties
Look I get it. The point of a resume is to toot your own horn and make you look good. However, if you owned your own business and it has 1 – 3 employees your job title should be owner – not President or CEO. If you are a receptionist don’t put down Vice President of First Impressions – true story here, I actually have a client that gave their receptionist this title – if you actually have this title you should change it on your resume. If you were a stay at home parent don’t put it on your resume as an actual job – no one will be impressed that you put laundry away, paid your bills and dropped your kids off at school. Do you know why? – because most of them have to do this as well without the luxury of staying at home. Don’t think that I’m knocking being a stay at home parent – it is a wonderful luxury. Just don’t try to spin it as anything different than it is.
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