Tag Archives: professional resumes

5 Things You Won’t See On A Professional Resume

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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.

Why Resume Writing is Better Left to the Professionals

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Resumes – they are one of the most important things we’ll ever write. Resumes are your first impression (aside from a cover letter) to any prospective employer, and if they are not a clear reflection of your awesomeness, you won’t make it to the next stage. You’ll make it into the trash can.

Learning to craft an irresistible and well-written professional resume can take hours and hours of expertise and know-how. Relying on professional resume writers to do the heavy lifting for you is a stellar way to land at the top of the heap. Why? Because all resumes are simply not created equal.

Why DIY Doesn’t Always Work

Few things are more frustrating than never hearing back from volumes of job submissions. If this is your reality, your resume is probably the culprit. It’s paramount that you find an expert resume writer to fix your resume before you lose yet another opportunity.

Why are resumes so difficult to master? Because, for one, editing your own work is always challenging, no matter the specific content. Your resume is highly personal, it tells the intimate story of your professional experience, and you’ve likely been using it for months if not years. That makes it exceedingly difficult to be objective, and to properly analyze. You may have glaring errors that you’ve missed through multiple edits, and working with a professional resume writer can eradicate many of these errors on the first pass.

Language and Formatting are Essential

Without significant research and obvious writing skills, knowing how to format and craft a resume is not innate for most people. Presenting your objectives, work history, and overall skill set in a well-crafted resume requires writing finesse. Furthermore, resumes have to look clean and polished to garner any attention – those that look messy and poorly put together won’t even receive the luxury of a read through.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, puts off potential employers more than misspellings and grammar errors in a resume either. A single mistake can cost you an interview. Employers wisely feel that if candidates can’t spend the time to be detailed-oriented in a perfected resume, they likely won’t exude the care and attention the position requires either.

As you can see, resume writing is tricky business; if you’re in the market for a new job, don’t trust this imperative element to landing your ideal gig to anyone other than  bona fide resume writing experts. You deserve the job of your dreams; make sure your resume reflects the best you possible!

Tina Courtney-Brown has been writing for the web for almost 20 years.  She possess a writing degree from Loyola Marymount University, and has advised writing across multiple formats – including resumes – for companies like Disney and JDate. She has produced and marketed innovative content for major players and boutique startups , with fortes including social media, SEO, massively multiplayer games, social networks, resume writing, and project management. Tina is also a certified Reiki practitioner, herbalist, nonprofit director and published author.  Learn more at her personal website, or find her on Facebook and Google+.