5 Common Mistakes That Will Ensure Your Resume Gets Tossed Heres a prediction: If your résumé feels boring, stilted, and borrowed, no ones going to want to hire you. By Drake Baer 0 Comments Email Recruiters look at a résumé for six seconds. So how do you stand out from the crowd, aside from awesome design? By avoiding threadbare phrases like stand out from the crowd, as David Mielach observes at Business News Daily. Once distilled, his points flow like this: Get as specific as possible, avoid tired phrases like the plague, and show--dont tell--the hiring manager why youre the person they need. Chuck-worthy offenses include: Clichés Dont lean on buzzwords like innovative, team player, or results oriented, says Employmentology author Darnell Clarke. Better to get specific. Instead of saying you have extensive experience in sales, Clarke says, note that youve worked in sales for 10 years, hit your quota the last 12 quarters, and note specific deals youve closed. References available upon request Never let the above phrase pollute your most precious page. The whole references available by request thing is already understood by recruiting and hiring managers--its kind of their job to know that--so trotting out that formality is a waste. If they want your references, theyll request them. Objective Hiring managers want to know your skills and experience--they dont care about your objective, says Stefanie Carrabba, senior consultant at Eliassen Group. Candidates should never put an objective on their résumé, she says. Their objective is to get the job. Vague claims Kimberly Bishop is an executive recruiter. She reports that on a recent search, 75% of the candidates had transformational leader on their résumé, a description that doesnt specifically mean anything that translates to a specific experience. Rather than claiming to be transformational--without explaining what that even means--Bishop recommends carving out exactly what your skillset is. Qualitative descriptions Want to get glossed over? Opt for jargon like seasoned, experienced, creative, and, again, innovative. I would leave off any qualitative description that is not accompanied by an example or metric, says Caroline Ceniza-Levine, career and business expert at SixFigureStart. Just give me years of experience and what exactly did you start or improve. And while youre at it, give a little thought to your cliche-strewn personal brand, as well. Words to Leave off Your Résumé [Image: Flickr user Leland Francisco] 0 Comments Email Print Drake Baer Drake Baer is a contributing writer at Fast Company, where he covers work culture. Hes the co-author of Everything Connects, a book about how intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational psychology shape innovation, due out in February. Email him: dbaer at fastcompany. Continue February 28, 2013 | 6:02 AM You Might Also Like Hate Small Talk? These 5 Questions Will Help You Work Any Room Hate Small Talk? 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Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 05:44:50 +0000
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