help i think my resume sucks

10 REASONS YOUR RESUME SUCKS AND YOU’RE NOT GETTING MORE THAN 6 SECONDS

In 2015, the United States capped its best year for hiring in 15 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics . This is great news for job seekers; but it also means it is a competitive job market out there and to nab your ideal role, it’s all about making an impression.  Ideally, your first impression is made face-to-face or at least by word of mouth through a mutual acquaintance or networking opportunity. In reality, not everyone is that lucky, leaving your resume to do the talking for you. With the abundance of resume templates, tips, webinars, and paid services available, there should be nothing but strong resumes flooding the inboxes of hiring managers everywhere. As an executive recruiting firm we can tell you that is definitely not the case. We continue to see poor resumes on a daily basis; and nothing will take you out of the running for your ideal job quite like a subpar resume.

As a job seeker, you want your resume to stand out among the crowd… but for the right reasons. Poor grammar, spelling mistakes, excessive use of industry related jargon , and too many words are common mistakes. Another common resume pitfall we encounter is that many professionals simply “update” their resumes with their recent work experience, rather than editing the entire document. According to Amanda Augustine of TheLadders, “As your career progresses, the emphasis of your resume should change…Employers are no longer focusing on your education, relevant internships, and extracurricular activities. Now they’re more interested in the skill sets you’ve developed and the accomplishments you’ve achieved in your professional career. Your resume needs to tell your story.”

Misspelled words and choppy professional histories are not the only resume fails we see.

10 Reasons Your Resume Sucks and You’re Not Getting More Than 6 Seconds 

1. You included your address.

Obviously, hiring managers want to get to know potential candidates. However, the chances of them coming to your house to speak with you are slim to none. If you are looking at a local position, it is appropriate to include your city and state so the employer knows you are a local candidate. But I’d leave off the street address. Photos and hobbies are another resume no-no. If you want the hiring manager to get to know you, why not take them to the place they can get to know you best … your LinkedIn Profile page. Including a direct link to your LI page allows a hiring manager or executive recruiter to learn more about your professional experience quickly and easily.

2. You’re still using an Objective while everyone else has written a Professional Summary .

In the 50+ years of combined experience here at TurningPoint Executive Search, we have yet to find a candidate who is not looking to apply their experience and their talent with a company that will provide him or her the opportunity to grow. We all know the stats: Hiring managers spend approximately six seconds looking at your resume before deciding whether you’re a viable candidate or not. Therefore, you need come out of the gate with a BANG! Replace your old Objectives with a well-developed, concise Professional Summary that provides a clear overview of who you are as a professional.

3. You did not include a Summary of Qualifications.

We like to think of this as your highlight reel. Developing a bulleted list of skills and experience and inserting it at the top of your resume will allow the hiring manager to see your best moves during the six seconds he or she is going to initially invest in getting to know you.

4. You’re still relying on your Education to get you in the door.

Unless you are a recent graduate, your practical experience will far outweigh your classroom experience in both time and relevance. While including any relevant and important degrees may still be needed to show you meet the job requirements, it should not be at the top of your resume.  Exceptions: A doctorate degree, masters, or relevant certification should highlighted by simply including the post-nominal initials.  This is especially true for certain types of positions, especially technical positions. Some companies prefer to hire professional with an advanced degree or specialty certification such as PHR (Professional in Human Resources).  Secondly, if the hiring manager graduated from the same college or was a member of the same fraternity, sorority or other campus organization, it is not considered unprofessional to make that connection by including your education background.

5. You’ve included unnecessary information .

You only get 6 seconds, remember? Hiring managers do not want to know what you minored in or your graduating GPA. They want the highlights only.

6. Your titles are too vague.

Director, Manager, Assistant Manager, Vice President, Senior, Managing Director. There are a myriad of professional titles used today. Hiring managers want to see what roles you have had in the past and what roles you are targeting in your current search. If you are looking for a senior level position, provide evidence of your experience with that type of role. “Manager” does not adequately define your seniority.

7. Your job description is boring.

Although most job descriptions are typically bulleted lists, this is your time to shine and sell your experience and impact in previous organization. “Managed” and “responsible for” is using passive language. Add life to your experience by using dynamic word choices such as: Drove, Developed, Instituted, Designed, Created, Implemented, or Built.

8. Your resume isn’t unique. It’s just hard to read. (I could insert the video before or after this one)

Unless you are looking for a job in the creative sector – design, graphics, advertising – using multiple font styles and sizes is distracting for a hiring manager who is quickly scanning your resume for key words. Varying the color of topics or sections make your resume appear unprofessional and can unintentionally take away from the value of the content you’ve included. If you want your resume to stand out visually, try avoiding common fonts such as Times New Roman and use clean-looking fonts such as Helvetica or Calibri.

9. Your companies have no descriptions.

Not everyone has worked for Nike or Google. Most job seekers have worked for less well-known organizations that might need some clarification. Including a one sentence company description allows hiring managers to get a feel for the types of industries you have experience in.  In addition “this description will also help the reader put your title into perspective… For instance, if you’re currently a director at a small company, including this description will help the reader understand why you may be targeting a manager-level role at a much larger organization,” Augustine says.

10. You don’t show your value by highlighting what you’ve achieved.

The last thing you want is for your resume to read as a job description. While there will certainly be tasks and duties included, your resume should show the reader what you bring to the table, why you will be an asset to the company. This can only be done by highlighting your successes. Numbers and percentages are excellent ways to show what you’ve achieved. Include money saved, sales projections exceeded, increases in ROI, new business, or revenue that you are responsible for or had a hand in. Emphasizing your achievements demonstrate the value you added to your previous company and what can your potential new company can expect from you.

If you’re only going to get six seconds, you’d better make them count. As cliché as it sounds, you will never get a second chance to make a first impression. In an ideal world, candidates would be able to make that first impression on a hiring manager face to face or on the telephone. With an average of 250 resumes for every corporate position, facetime in the initial phase of a job search is almost an impossibility. This is why it is essential that professionals develop a concise, dynamic, easy to read, error-free resume that highlights their successes, skill set, and experience and leaves an executive recruiter wanting more… in six seconds or less.

For a few more Resume Myths & Must Haves visit our Resume Toolkit.

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My Resume Sucks! (so here’s what to do about it)

It doesn’t need to suck – follow these 15 steps and your resume will rock!

One of the biggest concerns job hunters share is a lack of confidence in their resume. What they also share are the same mistakes when they write it. I’ve got some simple fixes you can make right now to make your resume something to be proud of.

• Stop writing about what you were responsible for – instead write about what you achieved . Readers of your resume are mostly interested in your skills, your experience, your talent, and how you apply it. The best way of expressing this is writing about your achievements. Your statements about your achievements should be results-oriented and as specific as possible. Use numbers where possible, as these have the greatest impact.
• Stop trying to create a piece of artwork – instead, lay it out simply . A resume shouldn’t be written using fancy fonts and table structures. Chances are, your resume is going to be run through a machine that’s going to strip out all your formatting anyway . It’s a waste of time.
• Take off your references . References will be taken on request anyway. Some industries and roles demand it. But also don’t write ‘available on request’ too – not required and you’re telling the reader what they will already know.
• Stop writing about the religious, political or social aspects of your life . You’re inviting discrimination – even though this is illegal – you can’t stop it when it has happened. Don’t be cast aside at the resume stage! Besides, these things are irrelevant.
• Stop writing about irrelevant experience – stay on message . If it ain’t relevant, don’t write it. OK, gaps in your resume are no good either, but if you can present a great resume without including irrelevant experience, then take that option.
• Stop writing about your hobbies too. Nobody really cares . Use the space on your resume for other things. Hobbies and interests are a waste of paper. You’d be really lucky to find a reader who will offer you an interview just because you share an interest. And it can count against you too. Into hunting? The reader might be thoroughly against it.
• Stop writing about low-grades and sub-standard performance . Really? Need I say why this isn’t a good thing to put on your resume. You’re handing the reader a reason to chuck your resume in the trash. Stating you passed is enough. But don’t lie about your grades – get rumbled on this and you’re through!
• Stop writing about your schooling – only graduate experience is relevant . Unless you’re gunning for your very first job, don’t include your schooling. It is not relevant whatsoever.
• Lose the photo!  No matter what you look like, lose the photo. Bin it now . You’re putting yourself at risk of discrimination.
• Stop overusing cliche words, like passionate . I groan every time I see the word passionate on a resume. Truth is, very few people are truly passionate about their work. So why is it overused? When you use words on your resume, make sure they are justifiable and demonstrable.
• Stop presenting a wall of words, rather than highlighting important keywords . If your resume is comprised of long paragraphs with lots of words in it, you’re making it more difficult to scan with the eye. Experiment with using line breaks and bold type to emphasise important skills, experience and competencies. Don’t go mad though!
• You haven’t included your core competencies . A big oversight, but it often happens. Make sure that your resume, at the very least , represents the core competencies required by your jobs and industry. Things like task management, planning, computer skills, etc These things are picked up by the software recruiters use, and if they’re not evident in your resume, then you won’t get a look in!
• You’re all over the place . Is your resume using a coherent and consistent language and structure? Does it flow well? Resumes are often organic documents, not written in entirety in one sitting – which can mean the way it is written can come across as fragmented.
• Be clear on your specialisms and what you are practitioner in . You may have broad experience, and/or a broad skill set, but sometimes less is more. Make sure that your resume is totally clear on what you’re a specialist at!
• Stop trying to be clever with words, and get to the point . I’ve read countless resumes that ramble on using buzzwords and marketing language, but fail to get to the nub of it. Readers want to see the sausage, not the sizzle. Try giving your resume to your mom/dad, or a relative who knows little about the intricacies of your work, and get them to describe your career history and profile. How does it sound when it’s played back to you?

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6 Major Resume Flaws (and How to Fix Them)

This article is from our friends at  LearnVest , a leading site for personal finance.

When job hunting, your resume has a way of highlighting little career imperfections in black and white.

Maybe you’ve job-hopped, had a long gap between gigs , or earned a degree that requires explaining (hello, art history majors!).

Is there a way to smooth over these resume imperfections— without  being dishonest? You betcha. You just have to get creative, be upfront, and do a little rebranding . We spoke with job coaches, recruiters,  and  candidates who have been in your shoes to find out how best to fix six of the most common resume flaws.

Problem #1: You Want to Change Fields but Don't Have Any Experience

What to Do: Play up your skills, not your positions . "What skills have you gathered in your previous positions that would be helpful in another job?" asks Lea McLeod, a career coach and the founder of Degrees of Transition, a job coaching firm.

That’s just what she did with her client, Todd Mauvais, 29. Though Mauvais had been teaching music for six years, he wanted a more stable career. He applied to government jobs for a full year before he intended to make his transition, but nothing panned out, and Mauvais wasn't sure why. Once he began working with McLeod, the problem was clear: He didn’t lack skills—he simply hadn’t identified the right field to apply them.

"Because Todd had a job where he commuted among multiple schools to teach arts classes, he was an exceptional self-manager," she says. "He also promoted summer arts programs to increase enrollment, was a great public speaker and presenter, and was comfortable in front of a room." She helped him recognize that this skill set translated perfectly to a career in sales .

Mauvais rewrote his resume to focus on his relationship building, speaking, and promotional skills, and reached out to a craft beer distributor he thought would be a good fit through  LinkedIn . In just over a month, the former music teacher was hired as a sales associate and is still happy in his role there today.

Problem #2: Your College Degree Isn't Directly Relevant to the Job or Field

What to Do: If this describes you, don't worry: You're hardly alone. "Only specific fields—like engineering, graphic design, healthcare, pharmaceutical, and automotive, to name a few—require related degrees for entry-level work," explains corporate recruiter Dennis Tupper. "Otherwise, companies are seeking someone who is coachable and moldable, will work hard, and has a vested interest and passion in the company or industry."

Taylor Brady, 23, faced this very challenge with his sociology degree. Having grown frustrated after three months of sending out resumes for jobs in social work and nonprofits without getting any response, he, too, reached out to McLeod. "I had friends graduating from business schoo l who were Excel wizards and such, but I had to be creative in regards to selling myself," says Brady.

"To focus Taylor's experience," explains McLeod, "we called out his work with a grant-writing mentor as a ‘special academic project ’ and included the types and values of the grants he had written, so it really popped when he was applying for the grant-writing jobs he really wanted.”

He also led his resume with a "Special Skills" section, which highlighted the key points of his past internships (including grant writing, donor database management, and volunteer coordination), then provided more information about each role in the “Work Experience” section. With McLeod's help, Brady found his current role as a grant writer at a nonprofit by rebranding his resume to focus exactly on what he could do for his potential employer.

Problem #3: You Have a Big Gap Between Jobs

What to Do: According to Jill Knittel, COO of recruiting and staffing firm Employee Relations Associates, significant gaps between jobs are fairly common imperfections that can be handled with two different approaches.

"One solution is to list just the number of years or months you worked at your earlier positions, rather than the usual start and end dates," Knittel advises. The other approach? "You can also use a  functional resume , which elaborates on your skills, instead of a chronological resume. This will take the focus away from time, and on to your abilities and what you can do for a company," she says. If asked in an interview about the time frame of your resume, you will still need to be honest about the gaps, but either of these approaches can de-emphasize them on paper.

Problem #4: You've Job-Hopped Frequently

What to Do: Jessica Bedford, a recruiter at Artisan Creative, a staffing agency that specializes in finding jobs for creative talent, recommends that  job-hoppers  include a "Reason for Leaving" next to each position, with a succinct explanation like "company closed," "layoff due to downsizing," or "relocated to new city."

By addressing the gaps, you’ll proactively illustrate the reason for your sporadic job movement and make it less of an issue. "If you have multiple gaps or have filled the time with several temporary projects, you might also create a section called ‘Consulting Work’ or ‘Freelance Work,’ and list all of them under the one section. With this approach, job seekers can account for a number of years at once," recommends Bedford.

If you stayed at a job for only a matter of months, consider eliminating it from your resume. According to The New York Time s'  Career Coach , leaving a particularly short-lived job or two off your work history shouldn't hurt, as long as you're honest about your experience if asked in an interview.

Problem #5: Your Resume is Three Pages Long, and You Don't Know What to Cut

What to Do: Tupper says that if you work in an industry unrelated to one you worked in 10 years ago, you can omit the details of that past experience and include only the years and industries in which you worked (so you don't appear deceitful in the case of a background check).

For jobs you held several years ago that are in the same field, but don’t reflect your current "level," keep descriptions brief. And, as mentioned above in the advice for job hoppers, jobs you held for only a few months can be eliminated, as long as you're upfront about the experience if the subject comes up.

Problem #6: You Haven't Snagged That First Real Job

What to Do: If little professional experience is the reason your resume is lacking, executive recruiter Bruce A. Hurwitz of Hurwitz Strategic Staffing recommends adding a subhead called "Related Employment Activities" right under "Work Experience."

"You can fill it with volunteer work, online courses , short-term employment, and consulting assignments—list everything from a  part-time job  to a webinar to an online course," says Hurwitz. This section allows you to explain why you’re the right candidate for the role—before a recruiter concludes you’re not. Don’t forget to include the valuable "soft skills" job candidates tend to underestimate, like the ability to resolve customer service issues, work with ambiguity, coordinate among different groups, and negotiate with vendors.

More From LearnVest

• Could Twitter Trump Your Resume?
• How to Explain a Big Employment Gap
• HR Experts Confess: 8 Biggest Interview Mistakes We See

Photo of woman looking at resume courtesy of Shutterstock .

Evolvable Me

Why Your Resume Sucks & How to Fix It

Why is that? I’m going to tell you why, and then I’m going to help you avoid the same mistake. And while my experience is mainly in hiring for IT-related roles, this advice can be used by any job seeker.

The UX of Resumes

I think the common understanding of how to write a resume is wrong. It’s wrong because the common approach is to develop a resume that’s focused on the candidate. Here is the most important thing you need to know about writing a resume:

The resume-writing process should not be focussed on you, the candidate. It should be focussed on the Hiring Manager .

Rule #1: No Templates

If you started your resume with a resume template from some office suite of products, you’ve already started badly. What does the person who created that template know about your industry, your country, the current job market and, most importantly, the people you’ll be sending the resume to?

If your resume is not designed with a Hiring Manager in mind, it’s probably not been designed at all. To design the right resume, you need to start with two blank documents. Two? Yep, TWO! We’ll get to that later. First, you need to fully understand Rule #2:

Rule #2: Know Your User

The Hiring Manager is the user of your resume. If it doesn’t satisfy their needs, it will be a failing resume.

So, what does a Hiring Manager need in a resume? Really just two things:

• They need to answer their common gating questions.

What happens if you don’t meet the Hiring Manager’s needs? You can answer that yourself. If they can’t find the answers to their gating questions in your resume, do you think they’re more likely to (a) let you through without getting the answers they wanted, (b) chase you up by phone to get the important information you left out, or (c) let your resume fall into the waste bin?

And if the answers are in there but they can’t find them fast? Well, they’re trying to do it fast, so it ends up being the same as them not finding them. I’ve had a full-time recruiter tell me I should never spend more than 2 minutes looking at a resume. Personally, I’m not that cut-throat, but you should know that there are people who are literally time-limiting your resume and putting a very high bar on its efficacy in communicating to them.

So, the big question: What are the Hiring Manager’s gating questions? Ah! Here’s the catch. You don’t actually know! Not exactly. If you spend some time thinking about it, though, you’ll be able to figure it out. There are some obvious and common ones you should think hard about…

Obvious Questions

Pretty much every manager will want to know a few things about your job history; at the very least: “ What companies have you worked for? In what roles? And for how long? ” Other questions they might be interested in answering include: “ Which country was each job in? Were you contracting, consulting, or doing in-house R&D? Did you have one role at that firm, or move through several? ” Now, almost every resume contains the answers to these questions. Often, though, the answers are distributed across multiple pages, or buried in the detail, which fails the “tell me fast” test. A “job history in a nutshell” is a must-have. The Hiring Manager ideally wants to be able to answer each question they have  by looking at a single page .

Think about this little detail: the Hiring Manager really wants to know how long  you worked at each role, but most people list start and end dates. Those are important, yet to answer the question of “how long?” with only that info, the reader has to do calendar math in their head, when you could have just written “(2 years 4 months)” next to the dates. Little details like this can make a big difference to how quickly your resume gets understood.

Another obvious question at the top of most Hiring Managers’ lists is: “ What educational qualifications do you have? ” Again, it’s present in most resumes, but where? It’s surprising how many people put this as the last thing on the last page of their resume, almost like a footnote. Again, the information is there, but not somewhere that the manager will see it quickly. I’m guessing people do this because they see their resume as one long reverse-chronological history, but often this is one of the first bits of info a Hiring Manager will want to know.

Some Common But Not-So-Obvious Questions

Here’s a question the Hiring Manager may be asking and which you may not be answering: “ Can this person communicate using the written word? ” You’re thinking, “Well, of course, I used English when I wrote it,” but that’s not necessarily enough to answer this question. It’s not uncommon today to see resumes where there isn’t a properly formed sentence in the whole thing. Instead, there’s endless lists of bullet points, all of which contain fragments of sentences or just lists of words and phrases. Use English. Use paragraphs. Write. Communicate as if the reader is reading , not scanning for keywords.

Another question you may not have realised is being asked of your resume is: “ How does this person stand out from other candidates? ” Are there things about you which are exceptional compared to other employees in your industry? You need to make sure they’re explained, and that they’re impossible to miss. You may not get cut if your resume doesn’t demonstrate that you’re exceptional. However, having one that explains (succinctly!) why you’re a head above the rest boosts your chances of getting to the next round phenomenally.

Some Questions Hiring Managers Aren’t Asking

“ How does the About Us page of your previous employer describe the company? ” Quite often I see the first paragraph of every job role in a resume has obviously been lifted straight from the company’s marketing material. Don’t do this. While what the company as a whole does is interesting, the Hiring Manager is much more interested in what you did at the company. Usually the relevant background can be summed up in one short sentence, often less than ten words. Example: “FakeInsure provides retail home, car and life insurance.” (Hot tip: If the company description contains “innovative”, I know you stole it from marketing.)

“ What’s the full list of every technology you used on each project? ” Do you really think someone cares which logging library you used on a project for six months in 2009? I care about understanding how deep your experience is in the few skills that you specialise in, and about getting a general feel for how broad your skill set is. And on that note, “ How does the candidate rank their own expertise in their 20 most-used technologies? ” is also something most Hiring Managers aren’t asking. For the skills where they think it’s important to know the depth of your expertise, they’ll make sure they test you using their own scale.

“ Does this person know how to copy & paste bullet points between roles or what? ” Seriously. I’ve seen resumes with 5 roles and 8 bullet points under each, with at least half of the points being exactly the same between each role. If you’ve done a bunch of common stuff in every role, just write that at the top! (And using a sentence instead of bullet points!)

What are the rest of the questions Hiring Managers are asking?

That’s the spirit! If you’re asking the question above, you’ve finally got the hang of it. You’ve realised you don’t care what you want to say about yourself, you only care what the resume reader wants to answer about you.

Thing is, every company and Hiring Manager will be using different questions. The same people will use different questions for different roles. I can’t hope to tell you everything they’ll be thinking. And this is where the two blank documents comes in.

When you’re getting ready to apply for a job, the second document you want to write is your resume or CV. Note that carefully – you write it second ! The first document you write is a list of questions – the questions you believe the Hiring Manager for this role will be asking. Put it in priority order. Once you’ve got that list of questions, you’ll know exactly what you need to write in your resume.

Pro tip: You can legally cheat here. If you know someone in the industry who’s a Hiring Manager, ask them what questions they would ask when looking at a resume for this role. Take their responses with a grain of salt, though. Questions will change from company to company depending on the hiring needs, the culture and the current team’s capability.

Wait a Minute. If the Resume is Based on the Role…

Does this mean you need a different resume for every role you apply for? The answer is… possibly. It depends how different the roles are that you’re applying for and, consequently, whether you expect Hiring Managers to be asking different questions.

Let’s take some examples. If you’re a software engineer applying to an algo-trading company, they’re very likely to be interested in whether you have previous experience in finance, or coding complex algorithms, or in writing high-volume, high-performance code. If you’re applying for a design agency consulting role, they’re probably more interested in whether you’ve got experience in doing small projects quickly and interfacing with customers. These managers have different questions which are answered by different information.

However, it’s possible your resume may answer the questions of all the different roles you’ll apply for, and that’s okay. What’s important is to write that first document – the list of questions you expect the Hiring Manager to be asking – each time you apply for a role. Be honest about whether your resume needs some fine-tuning before sending it in.

Be careful about trying to craft a resume that is everything to everyone, because it can end up being 50% irrelevant to everyone. In the example above, the agency won’t care much about your algorithm chops, and the algo-trading place may not care much about your people skills. You could put both in, but it may give the wrong impression, i.e. that you’re looking for a role where you get to repeat those previous achievements.

On Design & Formatting

Good design and formatting can grab the Hiring Manager’s attention and contribute to them finding the answers to their questions quickly. Here’s some quick tips: make section headings obvious; don’t follow bullets with long sentences; don’t have a hierarchy of bullets; in general, avoid bullets; don’t use tables; don’t write the exact dates of your tenure, months are good enough; don’t use a margin that takes up 1/3 of the page; use consistent styling throughout; use contrast to highlight the most important bits; don’t use bold to highlight every 5th word.

Again, a chance to legally cheat: If you have a friend who has visual design skills, you’d be very smart to get them to help in the design of your resume. Don’t be shy – most design folk love little projects like this. Even better, you can  learn the simple skills you need to format it better yourself.

One More Thing

Your Resume Action Plan

Here’s the tl;dr:

• Start your resume writing by thinking about and writing down the questions the Hiring Manager is most likely to be asking to pass resumes on to the next round.
• Put the answers to all those questions in the resume in a way that’s quick to assess.
• Don’t put in information that doesn’t help them answer their questions.
• Keep it short and well-designed.
• Don’t submit a previously-written resume to another role without thinking about whether this Hiring Manager is asking the same questions as the last one you submitted it to.

Try It Out!

If you’d like to test out your new resume-writing skills, apply to Tyro Payments! We’re hiring for heaps of roles at the moment, including Software Engineers, Testers, and Operations / DevOps folk. We’ve just expanded our Software Engineer recruitment to accept applicants from all over Australia and abroad, so if you’re planning to move to Sydney, this could be your chance! Here’s some links where you can find out more about Tyro  and the roles we currently have open . Make sure you mention my blog when you apply. 😉

Image credits: “Shredded !” by Craig Sunter “reading…” by Hans Splinter “Edges of a thick book pages taken in macro” by Horia Varlan “Reading” by Katy Tressedder

One thought on “ Why Your Resume Sucks & How to Fix It ”

I like your point of “4 year 6 months” against every job. I can’t calculate how long this guy worked for .. I’m going to tune my CV tonight !

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Your resume sucks. Here's how to fix it.

October 04, 2023

I want to hire you...!

...But, I can't hire you if I can't find you, and I won't find you if your resume sucks.

So, let's fix that. If you want to give yourself the best possible chance to land an interview from your next job application, this guide is for you.

Over the past few weeks, I've reviewed hundreds of resumes while hiring for open engineering roles at Craftwork . I've had people reach out on LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit and by email to apply, which is honestly awesome. I love that people are excited about what we're building and want to be a part of it.

But here's the thing: most of the applications I've seen are terrible . They're so bad that I can't even tell if the person is a good fit for the role. And if I can't tell if you're a good fit, I can't take away time from my team to interview you.

I genuinely believe that many of the people applying to work at Craftwork are great candidates - and with a little bit of love, their applications would shine. So I'm writing this guide to help you write a job application that doesn't suck, from a hiring manager's perspective.

Here's what I'm looking for when you apply

Ultimately, the goal of a job application is to give the hiring manager a reason to want to talk to you. It should clearly communicate what you're best at, what work you've actually done, and what drives you to do it . If you can do that, you're already ahead of the game.

You would be shocked to see how many applications I've seen that don't have the basics right.

Give your resume some love

Don't apply to a job if you don't have a detailed, up to date resume/CV ready to go. If you don't have a resume, you're not ready to apply for a job.

I've read through several applications that include nothing more than a name and an email address. No resume, no cover letter, no LinkedIn profile, not even a GitHub link!

As you might expect, these applications are rejected immediately.

Treat your LinkedIn profile like a living resume. If you take the time to fill in your profile with a detailed work history, it can be a suitable replacement for a pdf. Want to do both? Knock yourself out.

Every bit of your work history should include the company name, your job title, the dates you worked there, and a description of what you did. Many applications I've seen go to LinkedIn profiles which only contain a company name, dates and job title. That doesn't tell me anything useful, even if you worked at a FAANG.

For tech roles, include a short list of the technologies you used for that role. This is especially important if you're applying for a role that requires specific experience with a technology.

Don't lie on your resume by adding things you haven't done. You can absolutely exaggerate your accomplishments, but don't put yourself in a position where you might get caught in a lie.

Make it personal

Every one of us sees the world through a different lens. We all have different experiences, different perspectives, and different ways of thinking. That's what makes us unique. So why do so many resumes look the same?

If you want to stand out to a recruiter, let your personality come through a bit. Here's how:

Include a short bio at the top of your resume. Tell me who you are, what you're passionate about, and what you're looking for in your next role. This is a great way to show your personality and make yourself stand out.

Here's the bio I used the last time I brushed up my resume to apply for a job:

WHO AM I An impassioned, imperfect, endlessly curious person, fascinated by design and technology, trying to leave the world in better shape than I found it, and amplify the accomplishments of those around me.

Admittedly, I cringe just a little bit reading it now - but hopefully you get the idea. It's personal, it's unique, and it's a great way to start a conversation.

Don't use a cover letter template. I don't know if ChatGPT is to blame for this or what, but I've read several cover letter back-to-back that were nearly identical except for a few specific details. If you're going to write a cover letter, make it personal. Tell me why you're excited about the role and why you think you'd be a good fit. If you're not going to make it personal, don't write one at all.

Lead with something interesting. This is intentionally vague -- but if your cover letter starts with some variation of "with over 5 years of experience, I..." your cover letter already sounds like 90% of the other cover letters I've read.

I know you're more interesting than that! Let your personality and interests shine through. If it all goes well, your cover letter is the start of a conversation - recruiters and hiring managers can read your resume for years of experience (if they really want to).

Here's the first few sentences to my most recent cover letter, to give you a sense of what I mean:

My name is Mike Bifulco, and I'm a software designer, engineer, and serial entrepreneur based in Charlotte, NC, USA. I'm submitting my C.V. for consideration for DevRel leadership roles at ████, and I couldn't be more excited to do so. I've spent my career helping others make their dreams come true by building great products on the web. Helping developers tackle new problems and grow their skill sets is an incredible privilege, and being able to do so while working for ████, and growing an incredible team of developer advocates and engineers would be a thrill.

Include your most meaningful personal projects. If you're applying for a job as a software engineer, I want to see what you've built. If you're applying for a job as a designer, I want to see what you've designed. If you've done some of your best work outside of your job, I would love to see it!

When possible, link to your available work online. This includes websites, apps in the app store, blog posts, videos, etc. If you've done something cool, I want to see it.

Found a role you're in love with? Go the extra mile.

If you've come across a job opportunity on a team that you're really smitten by, go the extra mile to make your application stand out. Here's a few ideas:

Use your network to find someone you know with a contact at the company you're applying to, even if it's on a different team. If your connection is good, ask transparently for an introduction, and ask them to put in a good word for you. If you're not sure if your connection is good, ask them to be honest with you. If they're not comfortable making an introduction, don't push it.

This is one reason why it's good to be proactively kind to people you work with - you never know when you might need a favor, and if you've only ever asked for favors, you're not going to get very far. Give without the expectation of getting anything in return, and you'll be surprised how often people are willing to help you out when you need it.

Reach out to the hiring manager directly. If you're applying for a role at a startup, there's a good chance that the hiring manager is the CEO or founder. If you're applying for a role at a larger company, there's a good chance that the hiring manager is a senior leader. Either way, they're probably pretty easy to find online.

Try out the product. If you're applying for a role at a company that has a product, try it out. If you like it, tell them why. If there are opportunities for improvement, offer constructive criticism. If you're applying to a developer tools company, try out the product and build something with it. Share what you've built with the team, or open a Pull Request to fix a bug or add a feature. This is a great way to show that you're passionate about the product and the company, that you can communicate and work well, and that you're a self-starter.

Improve the odds to get an interview

Everything I've mentioned so far is about making your application stand out, and giving the hiring manager a reason to want to talk to you and schedule that first interview. Yes, it can be a lot of work, and yes, there's definitely challenges with privilege and bias in the hiring process.

If you're serious about landing the best possible gig for your next role, you'll see the best results if you put in the work.

What do you think? Did I get anything really wrong here? Is there something you've done or seen that helps people land an interview? If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, I wanna hear it. Please reach out to me on Mastodon , Threads or shoot me an email .

Recommendations from around the web

• 📖 I'm currently reading through Oversubscribed , by Daniel Priestly. It's got some great insights on how to build a business whose demand exceeds its supply, and how to use that to your advantage.
• 🎨 I recently found out that the Washington Post's Design System is published online for anyone to check out (shout out to my pal Edward for sharing!). If you're at all interested in building UI libraries or design systems, give it a look.
• 📰 What not to do in API Versioning is the latest newsletter from APIs You Won't Hate, the dev community I help run. It's a great read on a hairy topic, especially if you're building APIs.

A guide to writing a resume that doesn't suck, from a hiring manager's perspective.

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Why résumé writing is difficult (but doesn't have to be).

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If you sat down to write the biography of your work-life as a novel, how interesting would it be to the average reader? Did you sign any key agreements with foreign nationals? Could you show a patent for a technical or medical issue you solved?

Let's say you're a six-figure executive. Can you prove in a short space that you led a novel-inspiring work-life that influenced many?

If not, maybe the company won't hire. Maybe you won't even make the first interview cut. Some of my military, business and political clients can show one-of-a-kind experiences that truly make them the candidate of choice for their next role. But even if you've got it, it's not easy.

Let's talk about one more step in the selling of you: the résumé's inherent value proposition. What you will need to do is try to tell your possibly less-interesting, less-dramatic work story in no more than three pages. To make your résumé defeat the applicant tracking system that most companies employ on LinkedIn and elsewhere to sort you out, you need to build a résumé that defeats an algorithm. Powerfully convey the value you bring in a humble-enough way to do what one of my executive clients asked me to do for him:

"John, if you could make it look like I walked on the moon and did most of the work to build the rocket ship that took me there, I will be happy."

Here are three reasons résumé writing is difficult and how you should think about it instead.

You're probably not an astronaut. 

For the rest of us non-astronauts, we need to convey powerful, compelling stories mixed with metrics to show we contributed to a company's bottom line. We need to show how we built something, solved problems and involved others.

Résumés must create value for the human reader but not be so magnificent that the person seems to walk on moon water. If you want to win an interview and demonstrate your achievements, it usually helps to take some credit for revenue growth and cost savings, for example, but you don't want to be so unrealistic that the reader thinks, "Did this guy have no help in doing all these things he said he did? We are looking for collaborators and leaders in sales. Not 'I did everything narcissists.'"

In today's modern-day résumé, achievements and numbers matter, but so do context, collaboration and cooperation. Render your achievements powerful without understating or overstating your claims.

It's hard to write about yourself. 

In my 27-plus years of résumé-writing and résumé reviews, I can't think of a time when my clients did not powerfully influence and help me craft their core résumé. In fact, to this day, I take a journalistic approach by looking at evaluations, talking to clients and pulling out stories that may be part of what I develop, offering my rendition of the cover letter and résumé.

The collaboration, interview, review of stories and achievements results in a working copy that we hope will truthfully but powerfully tell my clients' work-life stories, mission and overall value proposition.

Take it from Miles Davis, who  said , "Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself." Your work-life collapsed into this silly thing we call a résumé is not easy to write. It has to show your value, be a forward-looking instrument and win you an interview by influencing both the humans and the bots.

You live and work lost in space. 

Most executives I meet in my professional life don't spend most of their time refining their professional and personal brands. Why not? They often work very hard at building revenue and solving business, medical and people problems so their organization and stakeholders can prosper and make the world a bit better and more efficient.

Best case? If those same executives love what they do and know that what they do helps others, it adds to their work-life satisfaction and mission.

The job market and the selling of yourself is like a confusing, alien adventure, especially if you've mostly just focused on making it as an executive. What do you do to change that if you need to build your résumé and look for your next opportunity?

Get professional résumé help. Find creative ways to render your résumé and LinkedIn profile. Articulate complicated work history as a continuous, achievement-filled journey. Infuse documents with an argument and a point of view, and stop your job history from sounding like an obituary. Don't let your audience read you as, "Ah, a work-life well-led." Lead them into wanting a conversation with you, where you can continue playing the music you were destined to play.

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21 Things Recruiters Absolutely Hate About Your Resume

Updated: August 25, 2017

Published: July 28, 2016

I'll never forget one of my first job interviews out of college.

I was applying for a marketing position at a technology company. (No, not HubSpot.) Because my college major had nothing to do with marketing or technology, I'd written "Relevant coursework: Statistics" in the education section of my resume in an effort to d raw a  connection.

When I came in to interview, everything was going great -- until I met  with one of the company's VPs. He sat down, turned my resume over on the table in front of him, scribbled down an advanced statistics question, and pushed it across the table to me.

Let's just say it'd been a while since I brushed up on my statistics.  I ended up reasoning my way through the problem, but it wasn't a piece of cake -- and I was stressed as heck. I learned an important lesson that day: Never put something on your resume you can't back up 100%. That, my friends, is just one of the many things recruiters hate to see on resumes.

Every recruiter has their own list of things they don't like to see on resumes, and you never know who's going to see yours. That's why it's important to avoid all the most common resume mistakes.

I spoke with some of the top recruiters here at HubSpot to find out the top 21 things recruiters and hiring managers don't want to see on your resume.  Needless to say, you may want to bookmark this one ...

21 Things Recruiters Absolutely Hate About Your Resume

1) when you send it in a google doc, and then don't grant proper permissions..

Before you send your resume to a recruiter, you need to convert it to a format that allows  all  recipients to read it as intended.

Ideally, this means converting it into a PDF format so none of the original formatting or spacing is lost in translation. You can convert a Microsoft Word document into a PDF by choosing File > Save as Adobe PDF.

If you have to send your resume over as a Google Doc, at least grant the recipient proper permissions to view it by clicking "Share" in the top-right corner of your Google Doc, entering in the email address of the people you want to include, and choosing "Can view" from the dropdown menu.

Or, you can let anyone read it by clicking that "Share" button and then choosing "Get shareable link" at the top. Then, choose "can view" from the dropdown menu and send that link to the recruiter.

We recommend a PDF format, though. It's much more professional.

2) When your email address is "[email protected]."

There's a lot you can tell about a person from their email address ... and you don't want this to be how the recruiters find out you like soccer. Outdated names  can be a red flag, especially for tech-savvy companies. In the same vein, if you're still using a Hotmail, Comcast, Yahoo!, or AOL email address, it's time to upgrade.

If you need to, set up a separate email for your job hunt that's some iteration of your name. It's easy enough to create a new Gmail account for free. If you're interviewing for a technical job, you might consider using or creating an email address associated with your own custom domain to show you know more than the average person about the web and technology.

3) When you mention the wrong company. (Oops.)

Of course, no one ever  means  to address the wrong company in their resume. But if you're including your intentions as a candidate somewhere on your resume (which we don't recommend, by the way; see #10), then you need to get it right.

"It's unfortunate when a candidate has a good resume or cover letter, but don't proofread and put in the wrong company information," says Emily MacIntyre , Senior Marketing Recruiter here at HubSpot.

Getting this right goes beyond proofreading; it means paying attention to the details of the transaction. Customizing your resumes to different companies is expected, but you need to make sure you're sending the right resumes to the right companies. One tip is to save your different resumes with the company name in the title, like Kolowich-Resume-HubSpot.

4) When you get a little too creative with your fonts.

Recruiters are going to notice the font and formatting of your resume before they even start reading it -- which is why it's important to choose a font that's easily readable and professional.

The most common resume font is Times New Roman, in size 12-point font and black. It's a serif font, which tend to look more professional because they have what’s called “tails” on the letters. These tails make the letter look less block-like than sans serif fonts.

Image Credit: Kensington Design

Serif fonts other than Times New Roman that are great for resumes include Georgia, Bell MT, Goudy Old Style, and Garamond. If you really want to use a sans serif font, try Arial, Tahoma, Century Gothic, or Lucida Sans. Check out this infographic for some more guidance on what makes a good resume font.

Oh, and only use one font. Using two fonts looks a little messy and unprofessional -- and, worse, it can even look unintentional.

The only exception here is for designers. "I've seen some really wild, creative, and awesome resumes from designers,  and since that's their craft, I encourage that, " says Sean Marsters , Senior Product Recruiter at HubSpot.

5) When your high school is still on there.

Unless you're in high school or college, you can leave your high school off of your resume, says Marsters. He says that college graduates with minimal experience might be able to get away with it, but to most recruiters, it ends up looking like filler information.

The only exception here? If you connected with someone through your high school alumni network. In this case, you'd only want to include it in a resume that you send directly to that person. Otherwise, it could be seen as filler information.

Pro Tip: Three to five years after college or graduate school graduation, you can actually move your "Education" section to the bottom of your resume. Again, the only time you wouldn't want to do this is if you  connected with someone through an alumni network, or if you know an executive there also went to your school.

6) When you have two degrees, but only one GPA.

If you have a college degree  and  a graduate degree, don't only list the one GPA you're proud of. This calls into question  why  you've only listed one GPA, and so obviously left the other one out, explains  HubSpot's Recruiting Team Lead Dave Fernandez .

The benchmark for being able to remove GPA from your resume altogether is five to seven years after graduation, which is when candidates tend have a solid track record of employment, says Andrew Quinn , VP of Learning and Development at HubSpot.

"But if you did well in school but had lackluster job prospects following graduation because of, say, a bad economy, you could definitely leave it on longer.” It goes both ways, he explained: If you had great jobs and accomplishments following graduation but didn’t have a good GPA, consider removing your GPA earlier. Just don't remove one and not the other if you have multiple degrees.

7) When you list every piece of technology you've ever touched, seen, heard, smelt.

In the technology industry, it's very common for recruiters to see candidates listing out experience with all the technology they've ever heard of . But unless you've cut and edited videos extensively, you can't really put "Final Cut Pro" on your resume.

"Unless you're confident in your skill set and experience in that area, don't add technology just to add fodder," says Marsters.

Same goes with languages you speak, or your college classes. "College students shouldn't feel the need to list out every single class they took at school. In fact, you don't need  to add any classes -- but it's OK if you want to list a few important ones relevant to the job you're applying for."

Pro Tip:  Unless you can hold your own in an interview on the subjects you're listing, leave them out.

8) When you're "Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint."

Almost every single candidate feels the need to include this phrase on their resume -- but recruiters hate to see it. Basic proficiency in Microsoft Office Suite is assumed for college graduates these days.

"Unless you can run pivot tables, VLOOKUPs, and complex data modeling out of Excel, then don't include proficiency in Excel on your resume," says Marsters. "Writing a 500-word essay in Word and sorting a column in alphabetical order in Excel does not count as proficiency in those systems."

Pro Tip: If you want the Excel chops to be able to include it on your resume, here are the 10 best resources for learning Excel online .

9) When the formatting is all over the place.

Formatting speaks to the way candidates collect their thoughts and organize their ideas. As Quinn explains it, “A candidate’s resume is their ad to me. How are they structuring this ad so I get a clear picture of what they’re capable of?”

There are a few key things every candidate should check off the list before sending in a resume:

• Is your formatting consistent across all positions? For example, if you're bolding job titles, are all job titles bolded?
• Are your margins even?
• Are all items properly aligned? For example, if you've right-aligned dates, are they all lining up in tandem with one another?

Formatting consistency is another reason we recommend you send your resume as a PDF. (See #1.)

10) When you start off with a generalized summary.

Unless a company specifically asks for a summary at the top of your resume (which is doubtful), you really shouldn't include one, says MacIntyre. They're too easy to screw up -- this is a place where candidates have put the name of the wrong company. Plus, they usually come off sounding stuffy and insincere.

Instead, lean in to a "Key Skills" section either at the top or bottom of your resume, in column format, that highlights the top six to nine skills applicable to the role you’re applying for. Be sure to change these skills for each job -- and remember, leave out Microsoft Office Suite unless you're truly proficient.

Pro Tip:  Although you should leave this section off your resume, you should write something in the "Summary" section of your LinkedIn profile . Use this section to write out specific skills and achievements, link to your portfolio or blog, and talk about awards you've won or projects you've worked on. The information and skills on here should be applicable to where you’re headed in your career, not irrelevant past skills.

11) When you use the pronouns "I" or "my."

Resumes are  not  the time to be using pronouns like "I" or "my," says MacIntyre. However, you should still use first-person, not the third-person, when conjugating your verbs.

This is tricky to explain. Here's how I think about it: Don't use the word "I" in your resume, but  assume  the word "I" when you conjugate your verbs to ensure they're in the first-person. So if you want to write that you develop promotional materials in your current role, write "Develop promotional materials," as in "I develop promotional materials" -- but without using the pronoun "I."

• Correct: "Develop promotional materials."
• Incorrect: "Develops promotional materials."

1 2 ) When your verb tenses are wrong .

Speaking of verb conjugation ... make sure all of your verb tenses are in the past tense for past positions, and in the present tense for current positions. Verb tense is evidence of attention to detail, which is important for any job -- especially if you're applying to a job where attention to detail matters, says Quinn.

Using the same example as above, here's how I'd write out that responsibility on a resume if it were my current position versus a past position:

• Current position: "Develop promotional materials."
• Past position: "Developed promotional materials."

The exception here is if you're talking about something that you did in your current position that "ended" in some way. For example, you'd use the past tense to write "Earned a spot in President's Club for achieving XYZ" because it's something you did that had a finite ending.

1 3 ) When you lis t your responsibilities, but not your accomplishments.

Sure, it's helpful for candidates to list out what they were responsible for doing in their job. But it's way more interesting to learn the results the candidates actually drove -- and putting down more responsibilities than accomplishments is a red flag.

Here's a great example: "Instead of writing 'Handled all monetary transactions,' write 'Increased revenue by X% year-over-year, resulting in promotion to Senior Account Manager and entrustment with enterprise-level deals,'" says Fernandez. "The latter is much more telling."

Include goals and metrics that recruiters can use to compare you against other candidates. List out the cool stuff you did in every position, and then choose the best four or five and turn them into bullet points like these:

• Drove 37% improvement in newsletter clickthrough rates by rewriting sales copy.
• Grew ecommerce sales 23% in just 6 months by redesigning and A/B testing all landing pages.

(For more examples of actionable data points, download these free resume templates .)

1 4 ) When you list outdated or irrelevant experience.

A resume isn't a place where you just tack on a new section every time you add a new job or volunteer opportunity. You should be picky about which roles, skills, experiences, and accomplishments you include -- all based on the role you're applying for.

So unless you're applying for a job that requires lifeguarding skills, you can leave out your summer lifeguarding job from college. If you're further down your career path, list the more recent roles you've had that complement the job you're applying for.

The only exception here is if you're still in college, or you're a recent college graduate with limited experience and you need to "fill out" your resume a little bit. In that case, don't just write that you were responsible for monitoring the waters for people in need of saving; glean relevant skills, such as learning how to resolve challenging, ambiguous situations.

1 5 ) When there are large chunks of text.

It takes hiring managers all of six seconds to scan your resume before deciding whether they're interested in you. If they see large chunks of text that aren't broken up by bullet points, it'll turn them off big time. Who likes reading large chunks of text?

It's the same reason bloggers use headers, bullet points, and other formatting tricks to break up long blog posts. It all comes down to making it easier for people to  like  reading your stuff.

Make sure you're using bullet points to list out your accomplishments underneath each position, and limit them to five or six bullet points per post. The order of your bullet points matters, too: Put the most important, relevant, and impressive ones first.

16) When it's ridden with buzzwords and meaningless clichés.

So you're a hardworking team player with exceptional problem-solving skills? That's cool, but ... what does that actually mean? Anyone could write this on their resume. (And believe me, they do.) It's meaningless. You need to give solid examples that are sincere, BS-free, and backed by evidence.

For example, let's say the job you're applying for is asking for someone with a strong knowledge of the marketing lifecycle. Use your resume as an opportunity to showcase this -- but don't just write, "Developed a strong knowledge of the marketing lifecycle." Write "Developed a strong knowledge of the marketing lifecycle and consumer journey through researching and writing in-depth articles on topics including SEO, content marketing, email marketing, branding, social media, and more."

Same goes for corporate buzzwords: Leave them out. Sweep your resume for annoying jargon and business babble, and replace these phrases with clearly articulated ones that make it clear to the recruiter what you did and how you did it.

17) When you don't explain your gaps.

Most of you know already that gaps in employment are red flags to recruiters -- but that's only true when you don't explain them.

If you took longer than six months off of work, you may want to explain the gap on your resume -- perhaps in italics or parenthesis. “Travelled abroad.” “Took time off for family.” “Took time off for personal reasons.” They just want to see a rational explanation -- that you were doing something productive with your time, not just hanging out watching Netflix. 

If you'd rather leave your resume for the meat of your relevant experiences, you choose to address a gap by including a note in your cover letter or in the email you send to the hiring manager that your resume is attached to: "You'll notice that there is a year-long gap between X and Y jobs. I'm more than happy to explain that further."

Either way, be  honest about it. If you're upfront, you'll seem trustworthy instead of fishy .

18) When it's inconsistent with your LinkedIn profile.

If a recruiter is interested in your resume, chances are, they'll look at your LinkedIn profile alongside it to learn more about you -- and check for discrepancies. Make sure you're updating your LinkedIn profile at the same time you're updating your resume. The two don't have to be identical, but they do have to be consistent. 

Pro Tip: Don't want to tip off your current colleagues that you're on the hunt for a new job? To make sure your LinkedIn profile edits aren't broadcast to your network, log in and move your cursor over "Profile" at the top of your homepage, then select "Edit Profile." Find the box on the right-hand side of your profile that says "Notify your network?" and toggle the button so it says "No."

19) When you get a little too crazy  with the formatting.

Standing out from the crowd is a good thing, especially when you're competing with hundreds, even thousands of applicants with a single piece of paper. But there is such thing as getting too crazy with the formatting. While recruiters have seen some really cool resumes -- particularly from designers -- sending a resume that strays far away from the normal resume format is a risk.

“If you stray too far from normal formatting, it can be hard to read and understand your resume," warns MacIntyre. "Don’t get so creative with infographic-style resumes that the information becomes difficult to digest.”

If you're willing to take the risk, gut check with a friend before you send your work in. But if you opt for a regularly formatted resume, that's perfectly OK. There are a few, subtle ways to make it stand out from looking like literally everybody else's. 

"You could stand in line at a college career fair and see 200 resumes in a row that all look the exact same," says Marsters. "Recruiters don't want to see word clouds or calligraphy, but it doesn't hurt to find subtle ways to stand out from the crowd," says Marsters. "Start by staying away from the top three options when punching 'resume format' into Google."

(P.S. If you're working on a marketing resume specifically, then use these free templates to get you started .)

20 ) when it's basically a novel..

Remember how nobody likes to read a ton of text? Recruiters don't want to flip through multiple pages to read about your experiences. A good rule of thumb is to limit your resume to one page for every ten years of experience. Chances are, recruiters won't even get to page two -- but if you absolutely must bleed onto another page, then definitely don't exceed two.

If you're having trouble cutting your resume down, think about tip #13 and make sure any outdated or irrelevant work experience is cut. You might also consider cutting your education section if you're more than five years out of college or have a lot of solid, relevant experience.

21 ) When you pair it  with unprofessional email copy.

There are a lot of jobs out there that ask people to apply via email. But think about how many emails those recruiters get. Do you think they actually open the resumes in every single one of those emails?

Not a chance. What you write in that email will make a huge difference in whether or not the person you send it to actually opens your resume and gives you a shot. That's why you have to spend time crafting an email that's concise, professional, and makes you sound appropriately enthusiastic about the position.

Your subject line should make it totally clear what the content of your email is -- something like "Application: Content Writer".

As for the email itself, clearly state the position name and team you're applying for. Write 1–3 sentences explaining why you think you're good for the position and why you're excited about the role. Then, end with something like, "I've attached my resume in case you'd like to learn more about my background and experiences. Feel free to contact me by email or phone [give phone number here] with any questions. Thanks for taking the time to read my application."

And finally, don't forget to name your resume attachment something clear and professional, like  Kolowich-Resume-HubSpot.

If you've gotten this far and your resume is clear of all these things, then you're ready to send it in. Good luck with your search! (P.S. We're hiring .)

What do you absolutely hate seeing on a resume? Share with us in the comments.

Don't forget to share this post!

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