Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Delete These Distracting (and Potentially Detrimental) Things From Your Resume
lifehacker.com: While it’s true that your resume should highlight your accomplishments and experience relevant to the job you’re applying for, recruiters usually only spend about 7 seconds looking at resumes, on average. At this stage of the application process, they’re looking for a reason to reject applicants, which is why you don’t want to waste a precious second of their time on unnecessary information. Here’s all the stuff recruiters say you don’t need to include on your CV.
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8 comments:
This advice is useful, but nothing too novel or exciting. I'd say the gist of it is: cut the fluff, and present what's important. I feel like this is generally sound advice when presenting yourself to anyone: be it in an interview, a first day on the job, or even making friends. Granted, there's always a level of politeness and flattery that these situations call for. I think these resume standards are smart to follow, but I'm interested in brainstorming some unique ways to make mine stand out, especially if people only glance at it for a few seconds. Like any job application experience, I know it's different for theatre professionals, so it may not be as frowned upon to spruce it up in some way. Some of my favorite examples I've seen are elegant line drawings in the theme of the person's position and/or desired position (i.e. a cute light with a cable forming the underline of the name), or a funny special skill thrown in.
I completely agree with Sidney, I think these tips are definitely helpful in things to help your resume, but they do mention that when people see resumes for the seven seconds they look at them for reasons they would not want to look any further at their resume. But I am really wondering if putting references or your address on a resume are really going to make someone not look further. I think the real vibe this article was getting at was ways to not use space on things that don’t matter. But what do they actually suggest we do put on our resumes that might make them want to look further at it since they only do look at it for seven seconds. All of these articles about what makes good resumes are so different, and some say to have something, and others say passionately to not have it, so I never really know what to listen to.
It's really saddening that so much is assumed about a person in 7 seconds. Just because an applicant doesn't have specifically what the recruiter is looking for on their resume doesn't mean they aren't the best person for the job. Resume culture ignores the fact that sometimes very skilled and competent people might not have prior experiences, might not be good at marketing themselves, might not have included skills they do possess that the recruiter is looking for, etc. A resume is such a small snapshot of a person that provides almost no information about who they really are. I hate that they advise not including your hobbies because personally, I think hobbies say a lot about a person. It tells you how well-rounded they are, whether they're willing to put time and effort into things that don't give them a paycheck, what kinds of things, people, and activities they value. Hobbies are very much what make people unique and give you insight into how they will perform socially/communication wise within your organization. While I agree with what the article says, it's unfortunate that removing your other skills, interests, and personal characteristics makes you a more desirable candidate.
Yeah I'm with Sid... I was hoping for really any new information or perspective but this is just things that you really obviously shouldn't have on your resume (except for references, which is different for theatre). I think maybe the most useful one is keep your education detail short, but even that should be obvious. Employers probably aren't going to care if you've taken a particular class. If there's some skill that you have from a class that doesn't show up in your work experience, then that should be listed as a skill, you don't need two bulky sections of education AND skills. If anything, in a networking based field like performing arts, you might want to list professors that you've studied under in your education section, but even then, if they're not one of your references, I would only put that on your resume if you know that they have worked with someone that you're applying to. And in that case, they should probably either be one of your references or you should ask them to contact the employer directly on your behalf.
I found this article very interesting as I am always looking for ways to update my resume for job applications. While some of the suggestions were very obvious, such as getting rid of irrelevant job experience, I found that in general I had never even thought of getting rid of some of the things suggested in the article. One thing that surprised me was that I should take my mailing address off my resume as everyone opts to emailing now. While this makes perfect sense and helps save visual space on my resume I had never thought of doing that. I also was surprised at the idea of not having a photo of myself on my resume as I’ve always done that by default, but now I will definitely reconsider the structure of my resume. Taking out information about irrelevant hobbies and my education also made perfect sense to me, but now I worry I may have a bit too much of that as well. I think I may format and write up two-three separate resumes for different types of jobs I may be interested, such as costume design, modeling, and acting so that they can be formatted properly for those job types.
Being a third-year grad this year I swear I have never talked about my resume more in my life than when I have these past two months. What I have learned from constant resume conversations and suggestions is that nine times out of ten everyone contradicts one another in things they like and don’t like in a resume. I agree that there are some basic things to avoid like fonts that are hard to read, bright color explosions, or really small print; but then it becomes much more confusing as to what certain people like and what others don’t. I think at the end of the day you should take all the feedback into consideration and change what most agreed on, but then made the edits that make the most sense to you. Not everyone is going to like your resume no matter how many hours you spend on it, so make one that you are proud of and what you feel reflects you best.
The thing most interesting to me about articles pertaining to resumes is how wildly different the expectation is in comparison to when I was in High School a decade ago and it seemed like they wanted everything short of my SSN to be on the resume. I feel that, over the years as I have revised and remade my resume again and again, I have just been shedding more and more information from it and instead inserting it into some weird online resume tool that companies have. I agree that resume's shouldn't be garish eye sores but it's certainly annoying trying to boil everything on my resume down to a single page when I know I've done more than a page worth of things that are noteworthy in an industry that wants you to be as well-versed in as many different things as possible. But overall I feel that this article didn't bring anything new to the table in comparison to articles like it save for a more recent timestamp. This article was written less than a week ago and I'm sure I could find a new one exactly like it.
I found this article to be extremely informative in how to compose a resume or alter the one you already have. Although these points weren’t obvious to me before reading this article, everything stated makes logical sense in a job application setting. The points made in this article are especially important in the theatre industry because often when applying to technical positions, the employer just wants to know you have adequate experience doing that job. However, I do think it is important to mention outside experiences even though they do not directly relate to the job position. For example, when I was applying to college, I made sure to mention my interest in math and science in my fine arts interviews because even though the two may seem not related, a lot of math and physics is used in carpentry and designing for a stage. So far, almost every day in my undergraduate experience, I have been able to connect and apply science concepts to theatre.
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