A resume is an undoubtedly important document that could well give you the leg up the professional ladder that you need, if not actually determine the course of your professional life. While it is vitally important what you put in your sample resume, what is also vitally important is what not to put in there! Here are some of the common resume mistakes that people make, and which you should take care to avoid as well:
Not Proof reading: Ok now these are just hilarious: “Great at dealing with the Pubic” yes the mistake is only that of one letter, but the missing ‘L’ makes one an expert in something entirely different from public relations! One actually ended up saying they were interested in a job on the “Information Supper Highway”, when of course what they meant to talk about was the “Information Super Highway”. Fact is that you cannot depend upon your Windows spell and grammar check to correct all the errors that you make in your resume; ones such as these will slip through. It is imperative to manually proof read your resume, and have it double checked by someone else as well.
Making it about the person rather than the professional: It is a formality that you mention something about your hobbies or likes and interests. If it is not relevant to the job you are interested in, skip it. For instance a prospective employer does not need to know that your hobbies are “playing with my dogs” or that you were nominated for prom king or queen. Just because one may be proud of a particular achievement or is particularly enamored of some activity does not make it relevant to your profession. You may be passionate about your ornithological pursuits; but it may be of simply no interest or relevance in your resume template. Applying for an accountant’s job makes your experience with rappelling irrelevant; however if it is a sports equipment company that you are hoping to land a job in, then mentioning it may make some sense.
Being a designer when you aren’t one: Now if your field of expertise was commercial art, or creative design or fashion design where you would benefit from showing off your creative flair or felicity with color combinations, then it would make sense for you to make your sample resume a work of art rather than keep to the regular resume formats. However if you are applying for a position that has nothing to do with creative design, then a whimsical or fanciful sample resume may not be the thing. Sure tweak it a bit so that it does not look like the regular resume formats, but steer clear of overdoing it; that will make you stand out and not in a nice way! If you are thinking to help your resume stand out by using a touch of humor or a bit of whimsy, then don’t. A sense of humor may be a great thing, just leave it out of your resume!
Part II of this article coming soon.
Read here to know how to write a resume. There are free resume samples to guide you. For example these attorney resumes.