I have been reading, writing and editing resumes since 1980. I am a professional recruiter having served in the following capacities: executive search recruiter, staff augmentation recruiter with temps, corporate recruiter, contract recruiter (hired gun) and recruiting management operations professional. Over the length of my career and especially during the advent of online applications, the most common complaint that I have heard is that whenever people apply for jobs, their resume disappears into a black hole because they never hear anything back from the company to which they applied.
The simple truth is that their resume DID go to a black hole, never to be seen by anyone at the company to which they applied. What is the reason for that?
80% of all resumes that I have read or scanned over the years, which is approaching 500,000 resumes, have fair to excellent content, meaning that I can figure out what skill set the person is trying to convey on their resume. Content is not the problem.
75% of all resumes that I have read suffer from the same issue: extremely poor formatting. What does that phrase really mean? Extremely poor formatting means that whenever a recruiter glances at your resume and the formatting is difficult to read at best, the odds are that it will find the dreaded black hole, never to be seen again. What is extremely bad formatting? How much time do you have? The reasons are basically infinite, but here is a solid list of the most egregious errors:
- Poor font size (whenever it takes a magnifying glass to read)
- Quirky font style (using a non-traditional style)
- Wasted white space (when the text starts well into the page)
- Not enough white space (you know, where people cram everything they ever did on the page)
- The size of a novel (where the resume goes on and on and on)
- Over CAPITALIZATION (WHERE PEOPLE CAPITALIZE EVERYTHING RANDOMLY)
- Extemporaneous words (“successfully” increased revenue as opposed to increased revenue)
- Redundant words (developed, developed, developed, developed, managed, managed)
- Wrong word tense (whenever it is a previous job, most actions should end in an “ed”)
- Indiscriminate usage of bolding, italics and underlining in attempt to create emphasis
- Improper word usage (their is a lose button on my shirt, to)
- Poor spelling (developped, Connecticutt, exercized, seperate, desparate, definitlay)
- Poor grammar (too, many, commas,)
- Run on sentences that go on forever and never make any real sense while boring the heck out of the reader and tempting the recruiter to hit the delete button and go on to the next resume before finishing the paragraph
- Using the bullet point for emphasis, but then placing a paragraph of text next to the bullet point to totally take away the emphasis
- Forgetting to place their contact information on their resume (phone, email address)
- Misspelling their email address or placing the wrong phone number on their resume
- Erroneous dates of employment that overlap or do not synch up
- Too much personal information (who really cares if you like bowling?)
- Placing your picture on the resume
The reasons resumes are formatted poorly are almost as long, but for brevity, I will only list a few:
- You let Uncle Bob write your resume
- Your professor, who has never held a job in his life outside of academia, guided and directed you
- You decided to try and write it yourself and save a few bucks
- You used a text book resume as a model (text books are written by professors)
- You used a Certified Resume Writer (code for English major), so it must be good because they are CERTIFIED
- You listened to a critique from one of the overpriced resume services and bought into their hype
- You found a resume template on the Internet and used it (99% of all Internet templates are utterly worthless)
The problem with letting your Uncle Bob write your resume is that though he may be older, you probably know as much as he does when it comes to resume writing.
For the most part, the jobs that professors have held are in the world of academia as opposed to the business world. They usually pattern their resumes after academic theories and concepts.
The issue with writing your own resume is that you are too subjective when it comes to writing about yourself. The money that you would spend having your resume written is an important investment. Now the question is whether you have made a good investment based on your writer.
Using a text book seems like a good idea except that text books are written by professors, who have usually only worked in schools.
Using a Certified Resume Writer seems like another good idea, and your resume will probably be grammatically correct, properly spelled. But what real world experience hiring people and interviewing people or being interviewed for positions do they really have? If very little, that influences how your resume is written.
You took your resume, regardless of how it was written or who wrote it, and got it critiqued from one of those high-priced services. But those services are only in the business to separate you from your hard earned money as opposed to helping you find employment.
Do you realize how much junk is on the Internet? If you don’t, download a resume template and you will receive your answer when you realize your resume has fallen into the black hole.
