Many of my clients ask why I leave out certain info off of their resume. The reason I give every time- is that it doesn’t sell- and that is what a resume is supposed to do
A lot of people make the mistake of including things on their resume that they shouldn’t. This is very typical. Naturally, you’re proud of every accomplishment you’ve had. You’d think that you should brag about everything you’ve done. You’re very eager to share every bit of information that describes you. Remember that a resume is not a biography. It should always be geared towards getting that certain job you’re aiming for.

Take this instance, if you ask your friends for a lawyer who they might recommend, they’d probably tell you “oh, this lawyer won 50 cases so far, graduated from a very prestigious law school and is currently representing this very famous person. They won’t exactly go saying “this lawyer, he’s very religious, he’s a very good cook, he also took theatre classes in his early years and he’s currently dating this famous celebrity!” right? And…just in case they do, you’d probably say, “Oh yeah, so what? How’s he as a lawyer, that’s what I’d want to know.” Employers can be very picky nowadays so you have to make sure that your resume would have a striking appeal and not be glittered with information you simply wanted to share.

I had one client who wanted to include her college work at 2 other universities all while maintaining her career. Both were at local community colleges. Not exactly something you want to bring up when you already have an MBA from an Ivy League school. It isn’t valuable info, and it left room on the resume for content that was. Another one of my clients had a job as a retail sales girl 13 years ago. This client was now working on a Financial Analyst position, but questioned why I left out that one job. Well, the thing here is-she wasn’t in sales anymore- it was eons ago, and it wasn’t relevant to the new career at hand that she had been in for the past 10 years.

Remember, it’s not a contest where the one who has the longest resume wins. Keep it short. Any information, experience or studies that is not relevant to your goal should not be included. Other things you’d best leave out are personal information such as race, religion, height and weight, marital status, age. Information prone to stereotypical biases should not be mentioned. Don’t give the employer any reason to regard your resume other than in a professional light. Also, try to do away with things that are not being asked for like your photo, letters of recommendations, transcripts or other certifications. Nobody would take time to read through all those if there are piles of resumes received.

If you want to know what you should or should not write in your resume, you can figure it out by asking yourself- will this one bit of information make me more likely to get an interview. If the answer is no- well you know what to do!

Tags: how to write a resume, job history, job history in resume, Resume, resume advice

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Applying for a Job, Free Advice, Resume, Resume Do's and Don'ts, how to write a resume. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.