Well let’s see I gave you 6 so far and I could do this until 2222 but I won’t. Here are some more things you should never do on a resume

7. Award winning, why why why? I had 22 awards at previous company 7yrs ago and? That information is useless and unnecessary unless you are a creative and you have Clio’s, Emmy’s and or Oscars other than that it’s just one more thing for a recruiter to ignore.

8. Cute or Cleaver or just down right asinine resume titles. If I need an Application Support person, what key words do you think I will put in Monster or Career Builder or Dice? Duh Application Support, not team player, award-winning, I’m the one you should hire (I just saw this on the boards), etc. Please save cute and cleaver for your friends and family.

9. Salary, if client x is paying x amount and you want 5k more why waste my time and yours, put down when you post what kind of money you want. If you want more than the job is paying I won’t call you, why would I? If you want less sure I’ll call. We all want more money. Bottom line (no pun intended) Salary expectation should not be on your resume, but when you post put in on!! I don’t want to waste my time or yours, also unless you are a rock star most recruiters won’t call you to probe for this information.

10. Living out your graphic design fantasies on your resume! You’re not a designer and if you are you know better that to use 10pt type, reverse type, non standard fonts, coloured type. etc. Standard Times Roman, Garamond, Ariel and nothing else! At least 12pt type, left aligned, your contact info centered and that’s it! And please don’t forget to list what you did, what projects you used X software on if you are IT, Certifications that pertain to your profession, It’s true we don’t want to read War and Peace, but when you edit to save space you just may be leaving off something I am looking for (that happens all of the time, so I waste more time having you redo your resume)

While we are on the subject of résumé’s, please, please, please don’t bother posting résumé’s with no information or everything but the kitchen sink. As I stated in the beginning recruiters are like the mailperson with matching addresses to houses, we match skills to job orders, if we don’t see the skill we don’t call. Clients pay us to find an exact match not a close or almost match.

Next how to kill your chances of a face to face interview after the phone screen.

Advertisement