We have written a lot about resumes. In fact, more than 100 times. But, besides focusing on resume do’s, we need to avoid resume don’ts.
Make Your Resume More Appealing: Resume Don’ts
Businesspeople often think the purpose of a resume is to present an autobiography of their career. It isn’t. Resumes represent marketing tools intended to take job candidates to the next step in the hiring process. Getting interviewed by the hiring manager.
The most effective resumes emphasize what hiring managers need to know. And leave off the details they don’t. The less space taken up by nonessential information, the easier it is for the person reading the resume to concentrate on the salient details. In my career, I have read thousands of résumés and can attest to how easy it is to lose track of what I want to learn about a candidate when a résumé contains unnecessary words.
Here are the kind of details that are almost always irrelevant on a résumé but that many people mistakenly believe are essential:
- Physical address
- Past and current employer locations
- Descriptions of each employer
- Academic coursework
- Employment history over 15 years in the past
- Graduation dates
- Employment not aligning with your current or future profession
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