In most cases, your professional resume provides a potential employer with a first impression of your skills and capabilities. As the saying goes, you will never get another chance to make this first impression and if your resume has problems, you are unlikely to be chosen for the job. Before you submit it, take a careful look at your professional resume and see if you’ve made any of the following mistakes.
1. Careless Mistakes
This is an obvious one, but it’s always worth repeating. When writing a professional resume, it hardly looks professional if there are spelling and/or grammar errors. Aside from simply running your resume through the typical word processing spelling and grammar check, be sure to have at least two other people look it over carefully.
Another careless mistake that might not seem obvious at first but could cost you a job is to misprint telephone numbers and email addresses. After all, if a potential employer cannot contact you or a reference, your resume could end up in the circular file doomed to oblivion. Also, set up a professional email just for business purposes with a professional, simple address, not the quirky fun email address you use for friends and family.
2. Inconsistent Style
Professional resume writers and professional writers in general understand that there should be a consistent style throughout any written work. For instance, if you decide to boldface the name of one of your education institutions, be sure to boldface all of the other names as well. Make sure everything has a consistent margin style, as well. This gives your resume a tidy, polished look, and hiring teams are more likely to notice the actual content rather than the glaring style inconsistencies.
3. Cookie-Cutter Style
Often, people are nervous about writing resumes, so they simply grab a template off the internet or from a word-processing program and copy it. A hiring manager can spot these types of resumes from a mile away, and they typically get tossed into the “no” pile. Basically, by using this type of resume, you are telling employers that you either don’t really care enough to craft a decent resume or you aren’t creative enough to figure out how to design an original, engaging resume.
4. A Dull Or Vague Objective
There are few things that kill an otherwise solid resume faster than a dull objective. Don’t be blah, sell yourself a little. A blah, vague objective might sound like this: “Dedicated, hard-working professional accountant seeking mid-level position with growth opportunities.” That’s not exactly inspiring. Instead, tailor the objective to the specific job for which you are applying and then quickly state your experience and goals. For instance: “CPA with 5 years of experience looking to apply high-level financial analysis and organizational skills to help clients maintain and improve their accounting systems.”
In many cases, it isn’t necessary to include a resume objective at all. This is especially true if your objective speaks only about what you hope to get out of the job experience. Employers generally do want employees to be happy, but they are more concerned with how you will promote the company’s success. If your objective fails to quickly describe how you and your skills can benefit the company, then it fails as an objective statement, and it might simply be best to omit an objective statement entirely.
5. A List Of Skills Rather Than Job Experience
It’s just fantastic if you are a great organizer and good with people and hard-working. It’s also great if you have experience with software or programs that are needed for a specific job. Listing your skills can be very important, but employers really want to look at your job history. Employers want to see that you successfully have applied your skills in a work setting.
Obviously, when you are just starting out after graduating college or trade school, your work history will be fairly sparse and your knowledge of different software or programs can be of more importance, but it is still important to list job experience. When you are seeking entry-level positions, employers understand that your work experience may be limited. What might be more important is your work ethic. Perhaps you just have a few part-time positions on your resume that you held during college. That can be just fine if your references are very enthusiastic about your skills, work habits and attitude.
Hiring professional resume writers is an excellent way to avoid these pitfalls. At Top 5 Resume Writers, we assess the skills of a variety of professional resume writing services. Selecting the best possible service can be a great first step toward securing the job you’ve always wanted. Take a look at our top picks and consider using one of these services. Not only can the create resumes tailored to specific jobs, they can write cover letters and help you write a biography for business networking and much more.
