The main purpose of your resume is to create a great first impression, so it needs to be extremely focused and include relevant information to help you land the job.
The average time hiring managers spend reviewing each resume falls between 5-10 seconds so it’s important that you capture their attention quickly or at least gain interest to learn more about you within those few seconds. Eliminating these 5 things will help.
Unnecessary dates
Whether deliberately or on-purpose, age discrimination is a major problem for job applicants so removing dates on everything besides your work history is key. If you graduated from college over 5 years ago, the key factor is that you earned your degree and that’s all hiring managers need to know. This applies for certifications, completed courses or licenses (besides expiration date).
Experience over 10-15 years ago
As mentioned above, you want to prevent any chances of age discrimination so including work experience over 20 years ago could do more harm than good. Of course the amount of years of experience on a resume varies depending on career level and industry. For example, medical physicians or senior-level executives could cover up to 20 years of experience in some cases.
Personal information, that’s too personal
Including family situations (ie. Married, kids and etc.) , headshot photos or irrelevant social media links will not only increase the chance of discrimination but also force people to judge you based on private life decisions. It is illegal for companies to ask about your national origin (race), religion, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, age, citizenship or marital status (number of kids). This information can be collected through general conversation during the interview but you’re not obligated to disclose anything.
Your address
Another factor that could ruin your chance of getting the job is your address. This information could help or hurt your chances if the employer feels you live too far away. Obviously, if you feel that you won’t be prompt and on-time every day – don’t go for the job. Sometimes money could cloud your ability to make the best decisions but truly evaluate your ability to get to work. Also, working remotely is slowly becoming part of the norm due to the Coronavirus pandemic. It’s now possible for you to live in NYC and work for a company in California. I personally believe a city, state and zip code is all you need but in some situations that information is subjective.
Extra Large Fonts & Overstated Designs
With ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems) being used regularly, you need to make sure your resume can be easily read for robots and humans. In order to get your resume seen by hiring managers, optimize your resume to be clear and concise by using bullet points and occasional highlighted areas with bold/underlined fonts. The font sizes should be around 11-12 throughout with your name and headers being slightly larger. You don’t want fonts that are too big as it will overpower the rest of the information and cause key details to be ignored or missed.
Knowing exactly what to include and remove from your resume could be challenging, that’s why WriteOne Resumes offers affordable resume writing services to help expedite the job search process. The job market has changed dramatically and your resume should match what employers need in 2021 – learn more by contacting WriteOne Resumes for a Free Evaluation or quality resume services.