Tag: Resume Writing

Your resume should evolve as frequently as your career does, so you should constantly be improving and editing it while on the job hunt. To help, here are some of our top resume writing tips to keep in mind when you next update your resume.

Contact Information

Our top resume writing tip may seem like a no-brainer, but ALWAYS include your contact information on your resume. An email address and phone number at minimum are a must on your resume. Feel free to include the address to your LinkedIn profile if you use LinkedIn regularly. You don’t need to include your full address on your resume, but it can be helpful to list your city so that hiring managers know you are in the area. By omitting contact information when building your resume, you are inadvertently making yourself inaccessible to employers and recruiters that you want to hear back from.

In the same vein, your phone number should be on your resume, so be sure that your voicemail is set up and that you can receive messages. While you may not leave voicemails yourself, hiring managers will. When employers receive the “mailbox not set up” or “mailbox is full” this signals to them that you don’t really care if you find work or not. Also, be sure to check any message that’s left before returning the call, they may have given you information or instructions in the voicemail, by not listening to it you’re making them repeat themselves, and indicating that perhaps you don’t follow instructions.

Formatting Tips

Another tip is to send a Word document or PDF version of your resume if possible. Employers will most likely not be able to open a resume if it’s sent as a Google Doc, and Google Docs makes it super easy to download your resume in multiple different file formats. Also, don’t send a jpeg or photo of your resume, you should have an electronic copy that you can email.

Additional tips are to keep your font consistent. Don’t use more than two fonts maximum, and keep their usage consistent throughout, ie. one font for headings and another for the body. More fonts than that can be distracting and perhaps unprofessional. Additionally, it is best to write out your resume, and not to send out an Indeed or LinkedIn style prefilled resume. These inevitably have formatting issues when they are transmitting or emailed outside of those platforms. Also, this tells your potential employer that you did not spend much time on your resume.

Our last resume formatting tip is not to worry if your resume is longer than one page. The “one-page resume” rule is antiquated, if you’ve held a number of jobs, a two page resume is perfectly fine. If your resume exceeds three pages, you likely have information on there that is not relevant to the role that you are applying for, and can actually end up hiding the skills and experiences you are trying to highlight.

Employment History and Education

When building your resume, organize the responsibilities within your job descriptions in order of importance and significance. If managing your company’s social media pages was your biggest responsibility, list that first. If you only spent about 5% of your time answering phones, list that last. You want to make sure that the employer can quickly understand the functions of your previous roles and the work you did there.

Along with each job title, be sure to list your months of employment along with the years. Employers want to be able to easily comprehend your work history and spot any employment gaps on your resume. If you don’t list the months, they might think you are trying to hide something, or assume a gap in your resume where there wasn’t one.

Another tip is to remember to include the company name, and location of that company, along with your job title on your resume. You might have worked for a chain, such as CVS or Starbucks, or alternatively, you could have worked for a small company in your hometown. The location provides important contextual information about your job.

With that said, it’s also critical to list the location of where you received your degree(s). Whenever you list a degree on your resume, be sure to include the name and location of the institution where you received that degree.

Send out your resume!

Of course, the whole point of sharing these resume tips and tricks is to ensure you are building a quality resume that will help you secure a job. At Whitman Associates, we see hundreds of resumes a week, and want to share our tips with you. We work with many job seekers, some looking for temp opportunities to get their foot in the door, and others that are looking for their next permanent role. To get started on the search for your next role, send your resume to resumes@whitmanjobs.com.

Having a great resume is key to being successful in your job search. Your resume is typically the first impression an employer has of you, so it’s important that it properly represents you. Recruiters often receive hundreds of resumes for each open position. To speed along their process, they’ll often throw away a resume as soon as they note certain mistakes. We don’t want you to fall into that trap! To help, we’ve listed five resume mistakes you need to avoid that job hunters often make.

1. Spelling and Grammar Mistakes

The most frequent resume mistakes are errors in spelling and grammar. Common resume mistakes like this are the easiest way to get your resume rejected because employers are likely to assume you are careless or sloppy in your work.

Make sure to edit your resume several times before submitting it. It also helps to have someone else read it over — a new set of eyes is more likely to pick up on any small resume errors. Or, there are a plethora of free, online grammar and spell-check sites you can run your resume through before submitting it. Grammarly and Scribbr are two popular options.

2. Length

Submitting a resume that is too long or too short is one of the five common resume mistakes you need to avoid. While it’s important that your resume is not excessively long, you should not exclude relevant work experience just to fit everything on one page. You don’t want a potential employer to discount you because you left off relevant experience.

At the same time, you don’t need to include every position you’ve had since the beginning of your career. Some of your past jobs might not be relevant to the current position you are applying for. Feel free to leave off the coffee bar you worked at through grad school if you have more relevant experience to include.

However, having too short of a resume is also a common resume mistake. If you are a recent college grad or just out of high school and have only worked at one or two positions, try to expand upon your responsibilities to lengthen your work history. Also, you can include extracurricular activities you participated in if the experience you gained seems relevant to your career. 

When expanding on specific positions, include quantitative details when describing your responsibilities. For example, if you worked as a sales representative, be sure to mention numbers such as your sales close rate, average deal, and number of sales per month.

3. Too Much Personal Information

Getting too personal is another one of the five common resume mistakes you need to avoid. Employers are going to hire you based on your work experience, not on your favorite hobbies. You can have a section for “Skills and Interests” on your resume, but you should avoid listing more than one or two interests unrelated to the job. It’s better to allow your interests to come up naturally. In a job interview, if your interviewer mentions their love of volleyball, then that would be an appropriate time to mention you share the same interest.

It’s not necessary to mention your marital status or children on your resume — these are also common resume mistakes. Again, a potential employer is only interested in your professional background. 

Don’t include your picture on your resume. At this stage of the application process, it is better to allow the recruiter to judge you solely based on your qualifications and work history — not your appearance. The exception is if you are applying for an acting or modeling role.

4. Too Busy

You want your resume to be easy for the recruiter to read, allowing them to quickly note how qualified you are for their position. Creating a resume that is too busy is an often overlooked one of the top five common resume mistakes you need to avoid. 

For example, some people choose to use more than two fonts. Instead, keep it simple, so that an employer’s eye can easily follow your work history down the page. There is no need to go crazy with bold and italicized fonts in different colors.

Avoid using borders and underlines to separate sections on your resume. As long as you have everything labeled appropriately, an employer will be able to understand it.

5. Missing Critical Information

Don’t make the common resume mistake of forgetting to include pertinent contact information. Make sure the header of your resume includes your full name, phone number and email address. You can also include a link to your LinkedIn profile or your address. If an employer doesn’t have your contact information, they won’t be able to reach you to set up an interview or offer you a job.

Always list the month and year you started and finished each position on your resume. Job seekers avoid adding dates to their work history for various reasons, but this is a huge common resume mistake to avoid! Omitting dates makes employers feel that you are hiding something.

List the appropriate job title for each of your positions. New employers will most likely conduct employment verifications on your work history and reference checks, so it’s important you have all the correct information. If there is a discrepancy with your job title or dates of employment, your new employer will be suspicious.

Lastly, one of the biggest of the five resume mistakes you need to avoid is leaving off software or programs that you’ve used. Be sure to list these, especially since an employer may be screening resumes electronically, and you don’t want to be overlooked because of what you left out.

Find Your Dream Job

Keep these five easily avoidable common resume mistakes on hand next time you update your resume and you’ll be sure to land a great job in no time! If you’ve been struggling with the job search for some time, consider working with a staffing agency for a qualified partner in seeking your dream job.