Cleaning Up Your Resume

[JeffAltmanCoach]

 

SUMMARY

I want to talk with you about 3 mistakes experienced job hunters make all the time that are very costly to them.

The 1st mistake I want to encourage you to the correct or to cleanup from your resume  (That’s probably the better term because not all of these are mistakes.  Some of them are corrections based upon different technology, but this was a mistake).  If you’re an experienced person, if you are someone who has been the business 10, 15, 20 years, your resume and started to get a little long in the tooth.  That’s 1 of those slang expressions for dated.

When you hire people, what do you look that?  Answer?  The more recent experience. People who are evaluating you are no different.  They are looking at the more recent experience and you’re still providing a lot of text from 10, 15, 20 years ago.  So, my encouragement to you is to start dropping or minimizing (is the best way to put it) all your experience past 10 years into something shorter.

I’m not saying to get off your resume, but to simply use more space for more recent work and minimize the amount of space for taking on “the antique experience”.  It’s the rear that you are going to be hired based upon work that you did in 1992, for example.  It’s possible but it’s not likely.  So, minimize the older experience.

Secondly, I want you to look at your resume and look for those stupid phrases that are just basically fill.  Passionate.  Team player.  Driven.  Motivated.  Get rid of the them!

People’s eyes glaze over when they see that stuff because they recognize all you are doing is filling in space.  Instead provide examples of how you were creative.  Provide examples of how you inspire the staff, rather than saying, “I’m an inspirational leader.” Ooh. Awful.

One last point I want to make for your resume is. The habit is to use black text on white background.  I want you to consider adding one color to emphasize points and yes, you can use bullets as part of it.  But I also want you to consider color because color will draw people’s eyes to things.  Now, don’t be stupid and includes ridiculous colors.  Conservative looking colors are effective.  You can use a deep blue, for example.  The eye will subtly go to those places and they won’t make the resume look awful.

So, again, black with another color is good enough.  Keep it classy.  Keep the font classy.  I use you a couple of very basic ones—Arial.  Applicant tracking systems can read it.  I don’t want you to submit through an ATS but people do it anyway so I am compelled to mention that.  Arial is easily red. Verdana, that is easily read.  I don’t particularly like Verdana. I don’t particularly like Verdana. I like Calibri.  It seems to be easily read by an ATS.

Think creatively about creating a strong impression with your resume.  Get rid of the garbage and minimize the antique experience that you have that few people will care about.

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