You may be the perfect fit for a job -- but a hiring manager is never
going to find that out if he trashes your resume after a mere glance.
Even in this age of online professional networking, a great resume is
still the foundation of a successful job search.
It's common knowledge that spelling errors and grammatical bloopers are
trash triggers (and these simple mistakes top many recruiters’ lists of
resume pet peeves). But is there anything else that job seekers are
unwittingly doing wrong? We asked some recruiting managers and career
experts about the resume errors that cause them to crumple and toss a
resume at first look -- and some of their answers may surprise you.
1. Your Resume Is Badly Formatted
Looks
matter. Career expert Abby Kohut lists misaligned indentations and
double spaces as a couple of the things that make a resume start to look
like it belongs in the garbage. The fix? Use tabs for indents, and
search your document for stray double spaces.
Also beware of
being too creative. "I don't like it when I receive resumes with funky
fonts," says Mona Abdel-Halim, co-founder of the Web-based resume tool
Resunate, who echoed other experts we spoke to. "It is not professional
and it makes the resume harder to read." When choosing resume fonts, opt
ones that are widely used and readable, such as Calibri or Arial, and
use no more than two fonts with their associated bold and italic styles.
2. Your Resume Is Immature
Other
hiring managers we talked to said they had immediately trashed resumes
with pictures on them -- for example, of cartoon character Bart Simpson
(in the case of one applicant for a technical writing job) or of a
kitten (an applicant for a customer service job). Cute resume additions
like these are for kids -- not professionals.
3. Your Resume Is Too Templated
Longtime recruiter Mike Monroe says that unaltered, familiar resume templates from
word-processing programs annoy him. "This won't automatically put you
in the trash, but it tells me that you have put less thought into your
resume than your competition," he says.
Jessica Campbell, an HR
manager for talent agency Voices.com, says one of her pet peeves is
"when a candidate has used a template resume," but hasn't updated it
before sending it. (And if you use Word's Track Changes feature to edit
your resume, make sure to accept all changes in the final version before
submitting it.)
To prevent your resume from ending up in the trash for this reason, customize your resume for each job you apply for using the language of the job ad and highlighting your most relevant experience.
"When
the resume is not tailored to the position, it shows you don't really
understand what the employer is looking for and are just hoping your
resume fits some of the criteria,” says career expert Heather Huhman,
author of Lies, Damned Lies & Internships: The Truth About Getting from Classroom to Cubicle.
“To avoid this mistake, show the employer how you fit those [criteria]
through your previous experience, skills and expertise."
4. Your Resume Is Sneaky
Kohut says she immediately distrusts people whose resumes have no dates on them. “Gaps are not a problem,” she says. “The problem is when you try to be deceptive."
David
S. Williams, founder and CEO of salary consultancy SpringRaise, agrees,
saying that if you are or have been unemployed, don’t try to hide it.
“You may be doing yourself a disservice because you may be a strong
candidate for a position, but you tried to hide your current status," he
says.
A better tactic is to be straightforward on your resume,
and then use your cover letter to tell the story of your career's
progress -- including information about how you maximized your time away
from the 9-to-5 routine. And do remember to write a cover letter -- not
doing so is another guaranteed way to get your resume thrown into the
trash, according to the experts.
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