After reviewing resumes for people on LinkedIn I found that many people are making similar mistakes. If you have a resume, check out the following list to make sure it is ready for applications.
Visibility and Readability
Has anyone ever given you a paper report? When they hand it to you, the first thing you do is glance at it briefly to make sure it is what you asked for. The glance may last only 5 seconds, or if it really catches your interest it might be 15 seconds. In that glance you don’t care about the details of the report, and it is the same when a recruiter or hiring manager flips through resumes to find relevant applicants. They are filtering out the ones that are obviously not relevant to their needs. The following problems damage your resume’s visibility or readability, which results in the resume not appearing to match what the reader is looking for because the relevant information is not immediately clear and obvious.
1. No document title
This is an issue I’ve seen in lots of resumes. If the recruiter can’t tell what you want to do and are qualified to do, you don’t present yourself as a match. The title should be the job title that you want and are qualified for. It doesn’t have to be your most recent job title. For example, if you have been a Customer Service Supervisor for a few years and now you want to move into a full management position, you would want to express that in your job title. A resume title of “Customer Service Manager” would be appropriate.
It’s also okay to have your name as the main title, with the job title you want under it or next to it. What matters is that it jumps out at the reader so the recruiter can immediately identify that you are at least in the ballpark of what they are looking for.
2. Paragraphs of text
The longer a section of text is, the less likely someone will read it. This means that the information in the paragraph may get lost unless you make it to the interview stage. Ever wonder why a recruiter asks you questions that were already answered in your resume? It’s likely because they didn’t read it fully, all they did is skim it.
No paragraph of text should be longer than one or two sentences, at most. To resolve this issue, examine the paragraph content and look for the following items:
- Repetitive items – Does the sentence add any new information for the reader?
- Irrelevant items – Does the sentence relate to the job you are applying to?
- Fluffy items – Does the sentence contain lots of adverbs or adjectives that don’t add anything meaningful?
- List items – Would the sentence content fit into a list format instead of a sentence?
- Header items – Would any of the content be better as a header or otherwise separated from the sentence? For example, if you have a sentence that explains the work was done for a specific company as a client, that information could be presented above the sentence.
- Achievements – Does the content express a measurable or noteworthy achievement? If so, see #3 below.
3. Hidden achievements
Don’t hide how great you are! If you’ve worked on an award-winning project, saved or generated a company a lot of money, or some other noteworthy accomplishment, you want the recruiter to know that.
One of the easiest ways to make achievements stand out is to put them in a separate list above your experience history.
4. Wasted empty space
White space is an important part of design, but that does not mean you should waste space on your resume. The most common cause of wasted empty space on a resume is lists. Now wait, you say, I just told you to use lists instead of paragraphs! And you should. But a bulleted (or numbered) list is only one way to present list content, and if it is too long (more than 5 items or so) then there is a lot of wasted space around the sides of the list. Here are some other methods you can use to present list content:
- A bulleted list across multiple columns
- A non-bulleted list across multiple columns
- An actual table (this option lets you can set borders or shaded cells to improve readability)
5. Poorly styled or inconsistent headers
Header styles should always follow a very simple hierarchy, with each “level” being less emphasized than the previous. For example, the title of this post is larger font than anything within the post. The next largest header is the one that separates the article content into two sections, and then the header that indicates each list item. Every time I want to add a new list item, I use the same header style which helps the reader easily identify where information is and how it is organized. If I decided to underline just one of the list items, it would look more emphasized than the others, which is an indication that it is more important. The reader might not even read the others, but rather go straight to the list item that is underlined.
The same concept applies to resumes. Each header level must have a different style, but all instances of the same header level should use the same style. Here are some common and uncommon ways to style headers:
- Font size increase or decrease – In general each header should be smaller than the header that is one rank up in importance. There are exceptions to this, but if there is a large font size increase for a lower header it may cause confusion for the reader.
- Font weight (bold)
- Font italics
- Font underline – I do not recommend underlining headers unless it is a high level header that is important.
- Indent/alignment – Often headers in documents are centered in comparison to the text within their section. On a resume, only high level headers should be centered, but you can use small indents to set content details apart. For example, the “Job title” header in this image has an increased left margin to make it appear indented:
Generally, headers in resumes do not need bullet points or numbers. Save bullet points for list content.
6. Too many years of experience, or detailed irrelevant experience
I’ve seen some recruiters say 5 years of background is sufficient, others say 10 years. As a general rule try to stay around 10 or under.
If you have experience that is within the most recent 10 years but has no relation at all to the job you are applying for, it’s okay to include it so there is no timeline gap on your resume. However instead of adding as many details about the position as you do for your other, more relevant experience, just include a short summary.
Writing and other issues
7. Full address
Although it used to be expected that you include your street or mailing address on your resume, that is no longer the case. Not only is providing your address in your resume unnecessary, it is not a secure place to put your address. Unless you only apply to jobs via recruiters you know personally, do not include your full address in your resume.
It is okay (and in some cases beneficial) to have your city and state, so you can include those, just not your full address.
8. Mixed tenses
Maintain the same tense when possible in a list of items. For example:
Bad:
- Resolved customer escalations
- Manage small projects
Good:
- Resolved customer escalations
- Managed small projects
9. Mixed punctuation
In a list, all items should follow the same rules about punctuation. That means each item in the list should either have an ending punctuation character to make it a complete sentence, or none of them should have it.
10. Editing and copy and paste errors
One of the most common errors that even professional writers have are the ones that happen from editing a document. You “cut” content out of one place in the document, and “paste” it into another, without realizing that you missed a comma, or forgot to capitalize a letter that is now at the start of a sentence, etc. These are especially obnoxious because they occur when you’ve already been staring at the document for awhile, which means you’re less likely to notice them before sending your resume to the job of your dreams.
There are many methods to catch such errors, but the simplest method is to leave the document for awhile and come back to it. Instead of reading the whole thing through, look at each sentence by itself. This will help you to catch errors that your brain “autocorrects” as you read.
Summary
Job hunting is stressful, but writing your resume doesn’t need to be. If you follow the above tips your resume will stand out from the pack and be easier for you to edit when you need to make changes.
I will be providing more tips on how to proofread in another post so keep an eye out for it!