Friday, February 19, 2010
10-resume-red-flags
Yahoo! Finance: "Searching for a job is not always easy, no matter what state the economy is in. And when you're on the hunt, your best weapon is your resume. This document must emphasize the best of your experience, education and skills and sell you to your future employer. It's a lot to ask, but it is possible to get your CV into fighting shape. Don't let your effort go to waste by having these glaring red flags on your resume."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
This article seemed pretty straight forward at first, done use glitter or anything too fancy, no speeling or grammatical mistakes, an unprofessional email etc. Those are all things that I find to be very common sense oriented. However, the things like including numbers to help convey your well doing, or the whole references thing. That was something that I hadnt considered to be detremental to a resume. Now I know that these are things that are merely suggestions that usually prove to be true, and I will be sure to take another look at my resume and see how this article can help me.
Many of the suggestions in here are good ones, but some are questionable. I have never seen a resume without references, especially a theatrical resume. Even the Career Center's examples from the career fair resume panel I attended had references. To me, using a separate references page is only making things more complicated by adding an extra page to your application. Also, while Jokerman et al. are not appropriate fonts for a resume, I used a font to create a personal logo for my name and did the rest of the resume in Times. Also, send a PDF! The employer doesn't have to have your font set to read your resume, and the formatting will never be screwed up.
I also was questioning the use of references on your resume. I was always told that you SHOULD include references, and not expect the potential employer to have to ask for them. And, in fact, for many of the internships that I'm applying to for the summer, the description tells you that you NEED to have references listed. While the format might be different since it is an internship as opposed to a long term job, I can't see the sense in not making that information readily available right from the start. It seems to me that that would just be too much of a hassle for the employer to contact you just to ask for them, and therefore it might inhibit them from considering you as a candidate.
Some of these suggestions are one's we've all heard before. However, I took note of some, such as stating achievements rather than saying "duties" or "responsibilities". It is surprising how if one puts a positive light on something, rather than giving it a negative connotation, the reader will be much more likely to have a positive response to your message. It may seem basic, but it is often forgotten or overlooked when writing a cover letter or resume.
Like Brian and Tiffany said, every resume format I researched had the references included. We are supposed to give our potential employers the easiest papers to read, and not give them extra pages.
As for the references debate, I too agree that there should be references on the resume. I feel that saying "references are available upon inquiry..." or something along that manner, makes it seem that your references aren't very good. I personally think that three well placed and legible references at the bottom of a resume can create a nice footer to a resume.
Going into this article I was a little scared of what might be listed as I just sent out a couple resumes that I had completely reformatted. Luckily though I have followed all these rules. It was not glittery and to my knowledge no grammatical errors. After reviewing this list, most seem pretty straight forward. The only thing that caught my eye was about listing references on the actual resume. This is something that has always seemed to be person by person, some like it, others hate it. My last resume listed references, but my newly reformatted one I took them off. Hopefully, it was the right choice for the jobs I was applying for.
When it comes to lists like this, I often wonder if the writer takes into account the variety of resumes that different fields tend to require. If a costume designer's resume looks exactly like the resume of a middle school English teacher, something is horribly wrong. The article fails to recognize that details like numbers may actually really help to clarify what exactly it was that you did since at least in the theater profession, it seems that jobs tend to blur with a little bit too much ease.
While this list seems to deal with mostly basic ideas in terms of resume writing, is it a good thing to look at in terms of someone is writing up a resume for the first time or as a list of reminders when updating a resume. Also, the thing about references was a little strange as I also include my references on resumes I have given out previously, and have never had any issues. Overall, it's an interesting list, but nothing really more than a quick overview on what to do and not do on a resume.
Some of these tips are using common sense. Some of them were useful, like including numbers. I would have liked it if they had mentioned more about the cover letter.
For my resume, i like using different fonts and formating. I think it adds more about my personality. but i also agree that there are limits to formating between what is just pretty and what is professional
Yeah NOT listening to the references one. That totally defeats the purpose of making this as simple as possible for the employer. If they have a resume on their desk with references next to a resume without them, who do you think they are going to contact first? Definitely not you to ASK for your references. They'll already be on to contacting the references that the other person provided.
I can't believe people really put glitter on their resumes!!! Legally Blonde much... anyway. I think it's really interesting that one of the things stated in this article are to not include references, I think that references are one of the most important things to have on your resume, especially at our stage when we are just trying to push ourselves into the world. Other than that, I agree with the points made in this article. I agree that it's important to make sure that you include accomplishments, rather than responsibilities. I also think that it's important to make sure that you are using a professional email address, rather than something that you made when you were eight years old.
We seem to get one of these every wekk, and I don't know if it's just our industry, or if it's that the authors don't have much authority on the issue, but we almost always find some gripe with them. I've certainly never heard before that it's bad to put references on the same page - and I think forcing the interviewer to request them explicitly makes you a less attractive candidate ("why don't I just call some of the references I have first?") Furthermore, while I hear the point about keeping text short and to the point, I don't think that using full sentances is such a terrible thing. A whole lot of employers still care strongly about decent english and communication skills, which includes proper grammar and punctuation. It's a lot more impressive to write convincingly and concisely in sentance form than to collapse into minimalist bulletted fragments.
While most of these points are straightforward, there are a few that I question. Many of them stem from the differences between job fields that this article totally overlooks. This article seems to be geared toward a business type applicant. Obviously, a person working in theatre would want to highlight different aspects. Even more specifically, a designer would want to highlight different things than an actor, who would highlight different things than a manager.
The other thing is, this will greatly vary by person. The content of the resume should dictate the format it takes on. Additionally, I think that a resume should reflect your personal aesthetic. It should show how you think and how you want to present the information. Now, I do not mean that a heart should replace every period… but attention should be paid to give the resume a similar finish to your regular work.
Some of these are pretty much no-brainers--such as "don't cover your resume in glitter" or "use grammar rules." However, some were new to me, such as "don't include references" or "let your resume and cover letter state your objective." I feel that these examples are more subjective, since it's not uncommon to hear conflicting advice. However, this is one of the more useful lists of resume tips; it's not obvious that "duties" and "responsibilities" would be words to avoid.
Post a Comment