Avoid These 10 Resume(CV) Mistakes 1. A sharp focus is an extremely important resume element. Given that employers screen resumes for between 2.5 and 20 seconds, a resume should show the employer at a glance what you want to do and what you’re good at. 2. Resume is duties-driven instead of accomplishments-driven. 3. Resumes should consist primarily of high-impact accomplishments statements that sell the job-seeker’s qualifications as the best candidate. Never use expressions such as “Duties included,” “Responsibilities included,” or “Responsible for.” That’s job-description language, not accomplishments-oriented resume language 4. In listing your jobs, what’s generally most important is your title/position. So list in this preferred order: Title/ position, name of employer, city/state of employer, dates of employment. 5. The rule of thumb for someone at the senior level is to list about 15 years worth of jobs. Age discrimination, unfortunately, is a reality, and even more likely, employers may think you’re too expensive if you list too much experience on your resume. Similarly, don’t provide the date of your college graduation if it was more than about 10 years ago. 6. There are few jobs today for which computer skills are not important. Yet many job-seekers, even those in technology fields, tend to tack a “Computer Skills” section to the end of their resumes. If computer skills are relevant to your field, list them in your Summary or Profile section. 7. Use a bulleted style to make your resume more reader friendly. 8. Most resumes created from a Microsoft Word template are instantly recognizable to employers as such. There’s nothing wrong with that except that employers have seen a million of them, so they don’t stand out. 9. Job-hunting today increasingly revolves around the mysterious world of keywords. Employers’ reliance on keywords to find the job candidates they want to interview has come about in recent years because of technology. Inundated by resumes from job-seekers, employers have increasingly relied on digitizing job-seeker resumes, placing those resumes in keyword-searchable databases, and using software to search those databases for specific keywords that relate to job vacancies. 10. Never list specific references directly on your resume. List them on a separate sheet, and even then, submit them only when specifically requested by an employer. Resume’s appearance becomes skewed when sent as an e-mail attachment and/or resume is not available in other electronic formats.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 07:50:32 +0000
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