5 Things Not to Do on Your Resume
1. List every task you perform. If your role as an administrative assistant requires you handle everything from preparing coffee in the morning to collaborating with your boss on financial reports in the afternoon, then focus on the report creating and not the coffee making. Resumes are strategic marketing pieces aimed at selling your value, not a laundry list of duties.
2. Forget to Connect the Dots for the Reader. Once you’ve identified strategic report building as an important resume add, you must then translate the value of the financial reports to the reader. Pave a path that begins with your role in gathering data from department managers, organizing that information into a meaningful Excel spreadsheet and then plotting out charts and graphs.
Show how those reports and graphs helped whomever was reviewing the reports make better decisions in regard to sales goals, customer relationship management or cost cutting, whatever the case may be.
What you are trying to succinctly, yet meaningfully accomplish is show the person reading your resume ‘why’ your experience building reports benefited your current company, and how it will likewise, benefit them.
Ideally, you will paint a picture of how your contribution was essential to the organization achieving specific, quantifiable ($ or # or %) growth goals.
3. Be Boring. Using the same word to begin each sentence; i.e., “developed” this; “developed” that feel tedious and blah to most readers. The role of a resume is more than just checking off a requirement in your job search. Instead, the resume must also prove out your abilities to communicate effectively, and with verve.
So, when you find your words repeating, make an effort to embolden your language with synonyms that stir senses. You may even find that restructuring sentences and paragraphs will help organically reduce the number of repeating words. For example, instead of saying, “developed new team approach with expanded communications,” you might instead lead with, “positioned company for double-digit customer increase by driving new team approach with expanded communications … etc.”
Follow this link for 2 more things ‘not’ to do on your resume: 5 Things Not To Do On Your Resume.
© Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, Partner/Owner, CareerTrend.net
I am a career writer hired by individuals and organizations to build game-changing stories for executives, professionals and entrepreneurs. To find out how I can support your personal or corporate storytelling goals, please follow this link: www.careertrend.net.
Leave a Reply