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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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