Resume Ruin!

I have a lot of friends out there looking for a job. The fact is, many people are still out of work despite improvements in the economy otherwise, and even those who currently have a job may be looking for something else because they’ve held onto a job they were unhappy with due to a slow job market. It’s a tough time to be job hunting because the market is flooded with candidates. I have helped many people with resumes and cover letters as well as networking and closing the deal on a job. And I have read a lot of resumes and gone through the resume review, interview and selection process to hire for positions many times in my past and current experience. And I see the same mistakes all the time.

Writing a resume is harder than most folks anticipate. Often what happens is people will write down their list of positions and what they did on the job, and send it out there hoping the job they want will magically come to them. Then, after sending out a hundred resumes, they wonder why no one has called. That is a bad idea in a normal job market; it is downright a waste of time in a challenging market. When you are searching for a job, no matter what kind of job it is, you become a sales person. You have to sell yourself (and I mean that in the most professional sense), and your resume is your primary marketing tool. Your resume is one of the most impactful things you can use to convince an employer that you are worth talking to (perhaps after networking, which is another blog entry). Once you get the interview, you can shine with your charming colors and show what a great person you are and what great interpersonal skills you have. But you could so easily be ruled out without a recruiter saying one word to you if you make a single mistake on your resume. So don’t you think it’s worth spending a little (correction—a LOT) more time writing and perfecting that resume?

Don’t feel too bad about it. Actually, many people make the same mistakes, so you are not alone. But just think—if you take the time to fix them, your chances will be so much better. So without further delay, here are the most common resume-writing mistakes I see people make:

1. It’s too long
When it comes to resumes, longer is not better. Very few people should have a resume longer than one page. Recruiters look at so many resumes for every open position, they spend very little time reading each resume (less than 10 seconds). So if you can’t convince them how awesome you are in one page, two pages are just going to bore them. It’s a much better idea to keep it short and make it count.

2. The “objective” or “summary” adds no value
Your objective (if you have one, and sometimes you don’t even need one) should state specifically the job you want and in some way point to your career goals and how your experience leads up to them. This is most useful if you are changing careers or industries since it’s sometimes hard to make that connection between a resume full of unrelated experience and the job you’re applying for. But if you can’t specifically state the job you want, don’t include an objective. You will just end up looking unfocused or not sure if you really want the job. If your list of experience is relevant and leads up to that job, the objective also would not add much value and would just take up valuable space in your resume that you could use highlighting that experience.

3. Bullet points are just a job description
Think about the person who reads your resume. She really does not care what you did on your last job. She cares about what you accomplished. What made you so special at that company or in that position? What did you do that was more than what any Joe Shmoe could have done in that same position? And most importantly, why should she hire you? If you highlight all your amazing accomplishments, she will think you can make the same level of accomplishments in that new job. If you just write down what you did, you wind up looking like someone who just does the minimum and does not take pride in the work that you do.

4. Nothing is quantified/No results are given
So you’ve figured out that you should highlight your accomplishments. Great! But how does the reader know exactly how good you are? Numbers are objective. I can write down that I cut costs or increased sales or was an amazing person to work with. But that is just my opinion about myself or my work until I can say how much I cut costs or increased sales or affected the organization. Don’t just make numbers up, though. If what is on your resume is an estimate, make sure you can back up what you write down with how you came up with that number, and that it is reasonably logical. Imagine someone in an interview asks you how you came up with that number and what you did to accomplish it.

5. Important words and/or skills are missing
It’s a sad fact that in many companies these days, the first pass at your resume comes from a computer. It searches for a certain number of key words in the resumes in its database, and only the ones that include most or all of those key words are then reviewed by a human being. That means that you could be the most qualified person out there for a particular position, but if you didn’t phrase your accomplishments in a way that includes certain words, you don’t even get noticed. Frustrating? Yes. But not impossible to conquer. You can usually determine the key traits that are important to the position by reading the job description. Imagine that! So by reading the job description you discover that the recruiter is looking for someone with good analytical skills and creativity, assuming that you do have those skills, make sure that the words “analyze” and “creative” appear on your resume when you describe your accomplishments.

6. It’s too generic
Many job-seekers do not modify their resume to reflect the job they are applying for. Unless every job you apply for is exactly the same and is in the same industry, you are going to need different versions of your resume. True, your work history and your accomplishments are still the same, but for different jobs, you will have different recruiters from different companies looking at your resume, and they could be looking for different things. Do your research on the industry, the company, and the job. Find out what is important to all of those things. Even companies in the same industry may have different values and cultures, and your resume should describe why you are exactly the right person for that job, company, and industry. So how you describe yourself may be slightly different.

7. Gaps in employment history
People are always trying to find clever ways of covering up imperfections in their work history. The truth is, the recruiter reading your resume is not stupid. They know what you’re doing if you omit dates on your resume or reorganize it out of order or whatever trick you come up with. You are better off being honest about what happened and explaining it in your own words (the way you want the company to understand your history) rather than letting them imagine what happened (which is often the worst). If you lost your job and were out of work for a year, it is better to explain your interpretation of what happened in your company to make you lose your job and what you did do with that year (hopefully you were staying informed about the industry, volunteering, or maybe you took some time off to spend with your family or travel, rather than lounging on the couch eating pork rinds) instead of just leaving it blank and letting the reader think that you did actually sit around eating pork rinds.

8. It doesn’t tell a “story”
Nobody really has a perfect work history because it’s rare that we know from day one what our dream job is and every job we have along the way leads us progressively and directly there. Sometimes we have to take a step back, move to a different industry, move to a different function, and try new things altogether. But if I’m looking at your resume and you have 8 years of computer engineering experience and you are applying to a job selling insurance, I’m going to scratch my head a little. You can still tell the story of how your previous jobs lead you to that point in your career through your accomplishments along the way. If you want to sell insurance, useful characteristics for that job might be influential skills, building relationships, a knowledge of medicine, teaching skills (so you can sell to other people who don’t know much about medicine), and being results-driven (since it’s probably commission-based). Show how you used those skills in your experience with computer engineering and how those skills would mean you’d be the best insurance salesman ever. And if it still seems like a bit of a stretch, here is where a career objective can help you. The idea is that YOU may know you would be the best insurance salesman ever, but the recruiter reading your resume may not make that connection. You have to make it more obvious. Remember—they only spend 10 seconds reading your resume.

9. It’s too wordy
Resume writing is not the same as writing a grant proposal, or writing a novel, or any other kind of writing. You can cut out virtually all unnecessary words as long as the message still makes sense. And because space is limited, it is in your best interest to do so, anyway, so you can get more of those “good” words in there that really describe who you are, and those results that illustrate how you performed on the job. But get right to the point. Again, think of the recruiter who spends 10 seconds looking at your resume. If he sees a page full of words words words, he could just get dizzy and lose interest. Hey, he’s human, and he has 300 resumes to look through to fill one position (let alone the five others he’s supposed to fill). Maybe it seems too difficult to describe the situation in few words, but remember that you can fill in the details in your interview. On your resume, get to the point: your exact accomplishment.

10. You are over-or under-qualified for the position
It’s probably not likely that you match every qualification in the job description to the letter. I think it’s safe to apply for positions if you match up with 75-80% of the qualifications or more. But a word of caution: you’re not necessarily going to have a better chance if you’re overly-qualified. One reason is that they might worry you would be constantly looking for a better offer, or they could worry that you would ask for too much money. But in addition, remember that the people considering you are human. If the hiring manager or someone on the team who reviews your resume feels that you might be too much competition for their own career paths, you might have a strike against you. Be careful to apply for positions that you are appropriately qualified for.

Good luck to all the job-seekers out there. Happy hunting, and stay strong.