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Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Six things to cut from your resume (and two you should add)
www.fastcompany.com: Less is more when it comes to your resume. If it doesn’t fit on a single page, it’s a sign from the universe that you need to hit “delete”–not fiddle with the margins and font size.
Yowzah, this article is pretty hard hitting. I am always self conscious about my resume, and I feel like this article has made me feel even worse! I will admit though that this article is extremely helpful, especially the other tips that the article linked to this article. I especially liked the the two new ideas provided by the article on what to add: "Soft skills that aren’t basic and obvious, like “conflict mediation” and “collaboration design”–rather than, say “listening” (here’s more info on finding resume-worthy soft skills) In some cases, a super-short “objective” statement (here’s how and when to write one that doesn’t sound pretentious or passé)" I will have to look at my resume with these six things to get rid of, as well as the two things to add when applying to summer jobs in the very near future. Maybe have a thesaurus open next to me while doing so.
List like this are so important for young people who have never really need a professional resume before. When creating a resume for an internship or first couple jobs you try to fill up the page with some unimportant information. One of the mot common things I hear is to take out Microsoft office from your resume since everyone knows how to do it by now. Just this week we have a cover letter and resume making session which was super useful. For me I had somethings in the wrong places and I added to many things. thanks to the workshop I was able to improve upon my resume. We need more lists like this for cover letters. Writing a cover letter is very tricky. One thing I definitely learned from all of this is that everyone will have different opinions on how these things should look. No matter this information is still very helpful.
This is really a good article or at least i found it helpful to myself as I have yet to create a truly professional and clean resume for myself. In the past I have had teachers and advisors tell em differing things about how a resume should look or run and some of them were even kind enough to give me their own but I always felt like they were disconnected for some reason. One of the most common things for that are given requirements right. Like when an institution or employer asks for a certain thing in their application they are expecting that thing as a base skill not as a special thing just in yourself. Then their also is the stating the obvious soft skills that you need in a theatrical production like soft skills and collaborating especially shouldn't be unique to an individual in our type of environment.
I was expecting a long drawn out article about why a resume should be a certain way and a handful of semi-useful tips that ultimately are very hard to implement in an actual resume. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised by this article. I think under the six things to cut, I for the most part agreed with all of them. I definitely agree with cutting a foreign language unless it is something you are actually confident about, especially because the consequences of faking that on a resume could be very real if hired partially based on that information. I will say, in regards to the last thing to cut, I am all for funny skills that show personality, as long as they are actual skills and at least somewhat relevant. Especially if you have room for them, I think they can be great interview conversation or something that makes your resume a little different.
This article reflects exactly what a resume should be: concise and straight to the point. I found it very helpful that, instead of vaguely describing what employers are looking for, this article explicitly lists out very specific things that should and should not be included in a resume. I always find it interesting that so much can be said about a person based on one sheet of paper. This is one of the reasons why resumes tend to be stressful to create and send out. People seeking employment want to make an expression that is still professional which can be hard to do when all that is presented is one piece of paper. I love that the article does not dance around peoples insecurities and very directly says to not place a second language if one is not fluent or to mention common soft skills. I always found that it was weird that people would list communication in their special skills section since it seems to be a given for most jobs.
5 comments:
Yowzah, this article is pretty hard hitting. I am always self conscious about my resume, and I feel like this article has made me feel even worse! I will admit though that this article is extremely helpful, especially the other tips that the article linked to this article. I especially liked the the two new ideas provided by the article on what to add: "Soft skills that aren’t basic and obvious, like “conflict mediation” and “collaboration design”–rather than, say “listening” (here’s more info on finding resume-worthy soft skills)
In some cases, a super-short “objective” statement (here’s how and when to write one that doesn’t sound pretentious or passé)" I will have to look at my resume with these six things to get rid of, as well as the two things to add when applying to summer jobs in the very near future. Maybe have a thesaurus open next to me while doing so.
List like this are so important for young people who have never really need a professional resume before. When creating a resume for an internship or first couple jobs you try to fill up the page with some unimportant information. One of the mot common things I hear is to take out Microsoft office from your resume since everyone knows how to do it by now. Just this week we have a cover letter and resume making session which was super useful. For me I had somethings in the wrong places and I added to many things. thanks to the workshop I was able to improve upon my resume. We need more lists like this for cover letters. Writing a cover letter is very tricky. One thing I definitely learned from all of this is that everyone will have different opinions on how these things should look. No matter this information is still very helpful.
This is really a good article or at least i found it helpful to myself as I have yet to create a truly professional and clean resume for myself. In the past I have had teachers and advisors tell em differing things about how a resume should look or run and some of them were even kind enough to give me their own but I always felt like they were disconnected for some reason. One of the most common things for that are given requirements right. Like when an institution or employer asks for a certain thing in their application they are expecting that thing as a base skill not as a special thing just in yourself. Then their also is the stating the obvious soft skills that you need in a theatrical production like soft skills and collaborating especially shouldn't be unique to an individual in our type of environment.
I was expecting a long drawn out article about why a resume should be a certain way and a handful of semi-useful tips that ultimately are very hard to implement in an actual resume. That being said, I was pleasantly surprised by this article. I think under the six things to cut, I for the most part agreed with all of them. I definitely agree with cutting a foreign language unless it is something you are actually confident about, especially because the consequences of faking that on a resume could be very real if hired partially based on that information. I will say, in regards to the last thing to cut, I am all for funny skills that show personality, as long as they are actual skills and at least somewhat relevant. Especially if you have room for them, I think they can be great interview conversation or something that makes your resume a little different.
This article reflects exactly what a resume should be: concise and straight to the point. I found it very helpful that, instead of vaguely describing what employers are looking for, this article explicitly lists out very specific things that should and should not be included in a resume. I always find it interesting that so much can be said about a person based on one sheet of paper. This is one of the reasons why resumes tend to be stressful to create and send out. People seeking employment want to make an expression that is still professional which can be hard to do when all that is presented is one piece of paper. I love that the article does not dance around peoples insecurities and very directly says to not place a second language if one is not fluent or to mention common soft skills. I always found that it was weird that people would list communication in their special skills section since it seems to be a given for most jobs.
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