Resume Do’s and Don’ts – Avoiding the Major Pitfalls
1. Poor or Inappropriate Formatting: The first impression a resume makes is generally the most lasting. Large blocks of uninterrupted text, small margins, text that is very small, or an abundance of bolding, italics, and “designer” fonts make documents difficult to read.
2. Lack of Focus: An effective resume should indicate to the reader within seven seconds, or less, the candidate’s targeted position and qualifications that match the opening.
3. Use of Self-serving Objective Statements: In today’s economy, hiring managers are not interested in what a candidate wants. Rather, they seek candidates that clearly state what they can do for the targeted company in terms of cutting costs, increasing profits, and enhancing productivity.
4. Poor Data Prioritization: A resume should reveal the candidate’s professional & academic background as it applies to the targeted position or program being sought, and in reverse-chronological order (the last job worked or school attended is listed first within that section).
5. Failure to Showcase and Quantify Accomplishments: Hiring managers will not read every line of a resume to determine what a candidate has to offer, especially if it’s buried within dense blocks of text. Applicants must provide special sections indicating professional or academic achievements and these must be quantified.
6. Including Non-relevant Data: Hobbies and interests, unless directly related to the current job search, should never be included.
7. Inappropriate Length: There is no one correct page length for a resume. The document is as long as it needs to be in order to provide a clear and effective picture of the candidate.
8. Personalizing the Document and using Casual Language: Modern resumes are business documents and should never be personalized with use of “I’ “my” “we” or other personal pronouns.
9. Redundancy of Data: Once information has been provided in a resume, it is not repeated elsewhere.
10. Spelling or Grammatical Errors and Incorrect Verb Tense: Once a spelling or grammatical error is detected by an admissions director or hiring manager, he or she will stop reading the resume.
Overcoming Age Discrimination
You’ve heard the saying, “You’re not getting older, you’re getting better.” Well maybe so, but employers don’t necessarily think that way when scanning resumes. Unfortunately, many of them shy away from hiring seasoned people because these pros are perceived as inflexible, over-trained, and worst of all, too expensive.
Your resume can overcome this obstacle in subtle ways that establish your capabilities. For instance, to overcome age discrimination, consider limiting your experience to 15 years for a managerial job, ten years for a technical job, and five years for a high-tech job. Leave other experiences off your resume or list it without dates.
Your goal is to only use information that is directly relevant to the job you are seeking. This is honest as well as fair to your prospective employer. After all, if you’re a 50-year-old applying for a job in accounting, why would your prospective employer care that you worked as a counselor for five-year-olds at Camp Gichi-Goomi when you were 16 years old? That’s exaggerating the concept, but you get the point.
New Graduate with No Experience – How Do You Wow a Hiring Manager?
If you’re just starting out in your chosen profession and you’re faced with having little professional experience to offer an employer, there are ways to maximize what you do have.
1. Focus on Academics in the Chosen Field or Relevant Training:
Rather than placing education or training last, as is the case in most resumes, move that section directly beneath the Opening Summary (and before Professional Experience). Within that section, (whether you’re a recent graduate or a seasoned professional transitioning to a new career), list all coursework that is relevant to your new profession. For example, an aspiring Accountant would list tax courses, finance, bookkeeping, and computer proficiency in Quicken, Excel, and Peachtree software. If you’ve excelled academically in your chosen field, and have been granted a scholarship or won a school award, this should also be mentioned.
2. Choose a Resume Format that will Emphasize Your Skills, Rather than your Lack of Experience:
Although most employers do prefer a reverse-chronological format (that is, your most recent experience detailed first, followed by your next most recent, etc.), there are times when a functional format is best. Functional formats showcase professional skills learned in school (or on the job). These formats can also stress pure academic experience – in the case of an entry-level Accountant that would mean listing coursework taken or specialized training under the subheading of Accounting Skills.
3. Build your Skills List for the New Career by Studying Job Postings from Online Sources (HotJobs, Dice, etc.):
Match up any qualifications the hiring manager wants that you also have learned academically. Then use those matches as proof that you have what it takes to get the job done.
Minimizing Lengthy Employment Gaps
What do you do if you have gaps between jobs? It’s not that you decided to drop out for a while to find your inner self. Perhaps you were laid off at the beginning of this historic recession and like millions of others have had difficulty finding a job in your industry or in a new area. Perhaps you had a baby and took some time off. Maybe you suffered an injury or had to take care of an aging parent. Whatever the situation, many people have employment gaps for very legitimate reasons. A resume doesn’t explain why the gaps are there and employers often don’t take the time to find out. How do you get past this?
If you have gaps in your employment history, consider highlighting what you did during your time off. Perhaps some volunteering, part-time consulting, or freelance work encompassed the skills or experience the company is looking for.
You could also use a functional resume rather than a reverse-chronological resume. When you write a functional resume, you list your skills as they apply to a specific job. With this format, your resume explains what you can do, what you have learned, and what precise abilities you bring to a new job. Although not many job applicants use this format, it is often far more effective than the reverse-chronological resume in answering the prospective employer’s most important question: “What skills do you have and how can they help me in my company?” This format is especially effective for job hoppers, career changers, people just entering the job market who have little work experience, and applicants who have been out of the job market for an extended length of time.
