I’m usually a glass half-full kind of gal and always like to lead with the positive, but as a professional resume writer I definitely see my fair share of bad resumes. What I always find interesting is not what they are missing, but the common elements that they all share. The worst of the bunch are the topic of this blog post and the top four things to make sure you DON’T include in your own professional resume.
1) Don’t use the word responsible or any phrase that contains it. Literally, in my entire career, I can count on one hand the times that this word has earned a place on one of my resumes. It’s passive, sounds like a job description and, even worse, makes you sound like you didn’t have any ownership over your career. Did you process, architect, accelerate, manage, maintain, administer, steer, organize or were you simply “responsible for?”. Yeah, thought so!
2) Don’t use an objective. I see this on almost every blog about resumes, but oddly enough about 75% of resumes sent to me still have one! An objective is all about you, and that’s not what today’s job search is focused on. Obviously you want more responsibility and career advancement, so unless your job target is Captain Obvious leave the objective off.
3) Don’t add your religious affiliations or unnecessary personal information. I’m not saying you need to keep your faith to yourself, but it’s not always a great idea to share your personal details before you get to know someone. Plus, HR managers are required to be completely anti-discriminatory, so if you have too much personal info, they may toss your resume just to avoid potential liability.
4) Don’t confuse the issue with extra phone numbers. Realistically, do you really want an employer to call your home phone? Do you even answer your home phone? I know we never answered it, and in fact didn’t know where it was for weeks on end, before converting to 100% cellular. It’s so much easier to just put one phone number on your resume. It doesn’t take up extra space, PLUS you can be sure that there will a responsible sounding message in case you can’t get to the phone when your dream job calls.