Resume Mistakes

Today, I have some of those stupid resume mistakes that way too many people make that I want to intercept you about.

Don't write this enormous 10 page or 5 page resume. No one is going to read it. No one cares about what you did in The Stone Ages. Get concise. Think about what the hiring manager is looking for; focusing on that.

2. There are instructions about how to submit your resume. If they want a PDF, send them a PDF. If they want a Word file, send them one.It's really that simple. Make sure your resume demonstrates a fit for the requirements. So often, the standard generic resume that you are going to be submitting does a poor job of doing that. Laser in. Focus in on what they are looking for. Make sure your resume actually demonstrates the fit. Do this, ideally, within the 1st half to three quarters of the 1st page of the resume.

3. . You have an email address that shows you are a mass murderer. I'm looking to give examples; I'm just going to say that some people's email addresses are insane! Don't have a stupid email address.

4. Another thing people do is write that "References are available upon request." Everyone knows that you are filling space when you put that in the resume and that you are trying to Balance it out. It is better to put 3 lines of information instead of using that stupid statement.

5. The opposite problem is that you actually put references on your resume! Way too often, unfortunately, what you are doing, Especially if you're sending it to a third party recruiter, You are giving them people that they going to try to call and recruit Or trying to get referrals to fill their position. Yes, you may be a potential candidate, but they are trying to fill the job and will feel better if They have 4 candidates to submit. 1 of them may or may not be you and you are giving them leads a people who they might be able to contact.

6. You decided to design your resume in order to make it look HOT! If you are not a designer, you don't really know what you are doing. Don't put a resume in that has different fonts and designs, titles and colors. Stick to a pretty traditional approach with great information in the 1st half to three quarters of the 1st page of your resume. When you're doing design and don't know what you're doing, most of you think you have an artistic quality about you, but you don't. The result is that you look like you are sending a ransom note people. Don't do that. Conversely, I am not a big fan of templates. I know most readers aren't either.There are a lot of things that get embedded in templates, particularly in Word that make a resume look ordinary.Templates are also difficult to parse if the company is in putting it into their applicant tracking system. Resume templates are not ideal because most of them use frames that they could make it difficult to parse and annoying to input into their systems.

7. In addition, if you're not using a template (which I don't want you to do), don't use embedded headers in the resume.

That could include your name, address and phone number or page 2 of 2. Things along those lines. There are a few reasons why. Sometimes, the systems have trouble reading it and when they parse resumes into their ATS, sometimes, the systems have parsing what is in the embedded headers. They are not going to go back manually to rekey it. In other words, you are causing a problem for them for government reporting and for a few other things. If they can't get your resume into their system, they have no way of finding you at a later date if another position opens up. You want to make that part of it easy.

In addition, sometimes when you use embedded headers, things don't line up properly. Suddenly you have page 2 of 2 on the bottom of page 1 because different versions of word lineup differently.
Also, that page 2 of 2 or page 2 of 3, that was a necessity when you are sending paper documents. These days, you are sending everything through email and thus the need to tell them what page it is or that you have a three-page resume isn't necessary anymore. Get rid of that and don't do that silly thing about what page they are on.

The next thing is that sometimes (and this is mostly true for less experienced workers), you feel compelled to list every job that you had and you taken something temporarily at the drycleaner in your neighborhood or at Starbucks and drew his attention away from the last relevant job that you had which is really what they care about. No one cares that during the last 4 months you been working at the drycleaner if you're trying to fill in IT, position or engineering job or something like that. Better than not have it there. Better to have a simple line that says or*next to the date of your most recent relevant work that draws them to words that say, "during the time I've not been working in IT, I've been working a non-IT related function.” Don't list your position at the drycleaner or at the Starbucks.

8. Too much information, particularly personal information. Why would someone put into their resume (I saw this last week) that they are single, married or divorced. I'm going to expand this to include gender, age, race… What have you. Personal statistics like this are difficult for an employer to handle because it puts them at risk for discrimination accusations. Don't put picture on your resume although I know that in some parts of the world that is ideal because you want to show yourself to be a professional looking individual, on a US centric resume, don't have a picture. Don't have intensely personal information there.

The long and the short of it is many times a resume winds up in the legendary blackhole and it is your fault. There's a tendency to job hunters have to blame the ATS... And don't get me wrong, there are many instances where it has been program definitely and winds up screaming at people who would be qualified for a role.

Often, the issue is the resume. Here are a few things that people do that interfere with the ATS:

1. Embedded headers. I said that one before, but I'm still getting embedded headers very regularly. They look lovely and that they show up on each successive page is completely irrelevant an unnecessary. That was something that was done in the day when people were printing resumes and they didn't want to lose the order of the resume. They staple them together. No one does that anymore. They are reading them off of the screen. Forget the embedded headers. Just put it on the top of page

2. Another thing that people do that interferes with the applicant tracking system is that they use shading in their resume. The shading looks lovely but the ATS will not be able to read what is within the shading. Not only that, it may outright "cough it up." If you think that anyone will then manually enter your information from the resume, you are sadly mistaken. Your resume is that.

3. If you think lines of the solution, you are also mistaken. Lines are not a solution. If anything, and ATS cannot read the words or lines in proximity to a line unless you've skipped the space. If you do want to use a line, skip a space before and skip a space after. That's also true. If you are using a slash mark (/). You need to put a space before and in the space after which is grammatically incorrect, but it has been submitted to an ATS, he needs to be there. Otherwise, they don't read those characters correctly. If you have a particular skill that is being sought, and you have 5 of the 6 letters to the ATS, you don't have that skill. Avoid slashes, avoid lines, avoid embedded headers, avoid shading.