The purpose of your resume is not to get the job. It is to make the recruiter or hiring manager interested enough to want to schedule an initial interview. You get one chance, and about 5-10 seconds at most to make a good first impression with your resume. To better understand what will make your resume immediately stand out, we polled our recruiters here at iMPact Business Group to find out and they indicated below the various mistakes to avoid.
Formatting
The most common mistake is just a sloppy document. If that is how the person represents themselves for something so important, it makes you ask a lot of different questions.
Here is a check list of things to review to make sure your resume looks professional:
- Avoid a misleading title. Sometimes it is as simple as tweaking the title to better align with the responsibilities. This is something we go over with our candidate to be sure that it is appropriate.
- Be consistent with your date format throughout the resume.
- Write your resume in first person, but do not use “I” and “my”.
- Make sure your document alignment is consistent.
- Don’t use a font that is either too small, or too elaborate.
- Use one font color, preferably black, unless there is a very specific reason to use different font colors.
- Make sure there are no grammar or spelling errors. Have someone proof read for you.
- When writing your summary and objective, don’t try to be “cutesy”. Use language that matches the job description. If it is formal, use formal language.
- Provide the right amount of detail. Not enough detail, and the recruiter won’t get a good understanding of your background, and too much detail will make it harder to digest. Use bullet points that are not too wordy.
Career Progress & Achievements
- Work History: When discussing your work history, make sure to focus on achievements, and not just work responsibilities. For example: Its fine that you were the top performer in the 3rd Qtr of 2016, but what were your stats, numbers, etc.? Quantify as much as possible, make sure each bullet point in your resume describes some sort of achievement.
- Career advancement: The appearance of going backwards in your career can also raise a red flag. For example, if you were a controller at previous job, but now you are a Finance Manager. This sometimes can be “explained” in the resume: “The current company is much larger in size than prior company”.
- Too many short stints. This obviously cannot be helped, but it is a top reason resumes are rejected, unless the company is ok with that. If you’ve had several jobs in a short amount of time, and you’re in a current job you don’t like, try to stick it out so that you don’t come across as someone who will only stick around for a short amount of time. If the short stints are because of successive contract opportunities, then note that on your resume.
Content is KEY
As a professional with experience within your discipline, it is very important to align your content with the language used within the common job descriptions of today. All too often, a candidate will skip the core content, dismissing these attributes of experience as too elementary to the career title they are targeting. Herein lies a disconnect from the Human Resource professional who is tasked with the first pass of screening.
The best way to understand what the initial review will be assessing is to understand the specific language of the job description. Compare and sample similar descriptions in the market to capture and understand the most common denominator of specific language. Ensure that your resume is written to the description du jour, do not skip any of the ingredients.
