205: Your Resume: How to Find the Balance Between Flash and Substance

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I want to begin today’s podcast by saying that the perspective I am presenting in this episode is mine, and mine alone.

Having said that, I AM one of fewer than 25 Master Resume Writers in the world, so my perspective carries a fair amount of weight.

On various social media accounts I follow of resume writing groups and individuals, I am seeing a disturbing trend of flash over substance.

At first glance, these resumes LOOK good, but when you actually read the documents, there’s no depth. No metrics.

Here are five specific concerns I have about these resumes.

1.    Measuring your opinion of your soft skills.

I’m seeing graphs where the candidate has ranked his or her communication skills, emotional intelligence, etc. SEEING THIS ON A RESUME MAKES ME CRAZY.

Here’s why: There’s no attribution – did you take a survey? Did someone say these things about you? Did you just decide you were great in these areas?

The second thing that makes me crazy about these graphs is that they are almost always divorced from the rest of the resume. Where are you showing evidence of your strengths in these areas, and how are you spoon-feeding the reader as to the connection? You absolutely cannot expect the reader to make those connections on their own in the approximately 10 seconds they take for an initial pass on your resume.

2.    Little, if any, content under each job you’ve held.

And, if you do have some content, it is a sentence or bullet about your job duties, rather than your achievements.

This hurts you in two ways: There are few, if any, keywords in this section to help you score well with the ATS. Secondly, if this keyword-shy resume actually gets seen by a human, there’s very little there to compel them to reach out to schedule an interview.

3.    Adding things that STILL aren’t considered acceptable on resumes.

If you are in North America, there is no reason for you to have a picture on your resume unless you are an actor or model.

We don’t care that you like to snow ski, unless you are applying for a job as a ski instructor (in which case the love of skiing should be obvious).

We CERTAINLY don’t want to know your family situation, number of children, age, or height.

When these things show on a resume, I am left feeling that this is a candidate who is either a) trying to be different, but not doing it in a positive way, or b) clueless about how to present themselves as a viable candidate. Either way, I’m left cold.

4.    Symbols next to your phone number, email, etc.

You have a series of 10 numbers at the top of your resume: 3 numbers, followed by 3 more numbers, followed by 4 numbers. Gee – I wonder what that could be? Real mystery.

You have lesaedwards@gmail.com – what could that mean?

Don’t insult the reader’s intelligence by using these symbols.

5.    A layout that is confusing.

I’ve seen far too many resumes that have three columns, or the specific information I am looking for isn’t easy to find, or the graphics take up incredibly valuable real estate.

Margins that are too small to effectively print the document, or so large that you need multiple pages to fit everything in. You simply didn’t use the real estate in a way that serves you.

Finally, you’ve created a document that cannot be used for submission to an ATS, so you’ll either need a parallel document that is unformatted, or it will take you five times as long to apply to each position.

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https://calendly.com/lesaedwards/zoom-meetings2