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How to Write a Bad Resume
(by
David
Hatch) |
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I
am not a big fan of highlighting weakness in
someone's career history. Unfortunately, I have
seen more resumes than I can count do exactly
that. While attempting to make themselves look
good, many people unknowingly end up
highlighting their weaknesses or worse - they
end up giving the appearance of weakness where
none may exist. When someone spends much time
and energy trying to polish up their resume and
reads something like this article, it can be
discouraging. But don't be discouraged, I am
here to help. Now, moving past the ego blow,
here are some things that are guaranteed to keep
you from getting an interview.
Cover letters do not belong in a resume
If you want to waste someone's time and greatly
reduce your chances of getting your resume read
by a potential employer, then by all means
include a lengthy summary at the beginning of
you resume. This is one of the great sins of
some other "professional resume writers."
Somewhere along the line someone came up with
some "official" template that most of them use
that always includes this summary section,
whether it is a recent college graduate's resume
or the resume of a partner at a major law firm.
When I see this I know that whoever wrote it for
them has never worked a single day as
professional recruiter. Let me be clear, it is a
dumb thing to do. It is amateurish and it is a
distraction from your actual resume, which IS
the summary of your work history. A brief
summary that highlights your career
accomplishments and whets a potential employer's
appetite to actually read your resume is called
a cover letter, and it should always be a
separate document.
Resumes are not mad libs
This one goes right back to my pet peeve about
templates. Of course a resume should have some
uniformity of structure - that does not mean
each sentence in a job history should look like
you had one of those old mad libs, fill in the
blank games. It is obvious when someone has
written a lazy resume with the appropriate
keywords stuck into a pre-existing resume
template. Don't do it. You do not want your
resume to look like 1,000 others that employer
has received. The surest way to avoid that is to
avoid this error.
Avoid goofy adjectives
Having spent years reading resumes as sent to me
as a placement specialist, the ones that I could
not get even halfway through - which means my
clients could not either - are the ones that
were heavy on cheesy adjectives. When I see an
obscure polysyllabic adjective used over and
over again in a resume, I am not seeing an
impressive linguist or professional. What I am
seeing, at least 98% of the time, is someone who
is trying to do one of two things: distract me
from a weak work history or someone who does not
know how to highlight their actual
accomplishments in a professional manner. No one
cares if you "worked vigorously to eliminate
capricious and aberrant fiduciary practices
within the company," at least not when written
in such a needlessly "verbose" manner.
Personal interests are for personals in the
local paper, not a professional resume
It's great that you enjoy long walks on the
beach and ultimate Frisbee, but it says nothing
about your professional experience. A resume is
not about what you do in your free time -- it is
about what you have accomplished on company
time. If, in an interview, you establish a
rapport with a potential employer and he asks if
you enjoy synchronized swimming - feel free to
answer, as that is the appropriate time to do
so. Otherwise, keep such personal information
off your resume, unless you are applying for a
job at ESPN.
There are many other things that end up on a
resume that hurt instead of help. But the above
mentioned ones are a good sample of those that
make a resume look particularly unprofessional.
So avoid them at all costs - unless you don't
really want the job.
David Hatch is a professional career consultant,
resume writer and placement specialist with over
a decade of experience. He is the founder
of
www.AccomplishedResumes.com and principal of
Hatch Legal Consulting. He has extensive
experience in placing attorneys and other
professionals in corporations, law firms and
other organizations and has written and edited
thousands of resumes and cover letters. |
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Editor's Note |
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If you are a
career coach or a human resources professional
and would like to contribute an article to
WorkBloom, please
contact us. |
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