How to Write a Resume
Avoiding the following items will shorten your resume. Additionally, omitting these items will make the focus on why you are the leading candidate.
• Objective
• Summary
• Hobbies
• References or References Available on Request
• Compensation
• Long paragraph formats
• Long-winded discussions of core responsibilities
• Too many details on jobs with well-known functions
• Details on jobs that date too far back in time
• Paragraph formatting
• Third person reference
• Hobbies
• Details on responsibilities with well-known job functions
• Details on entry-level jobs that date back in time
• Referring to yourself in the third person
HOW TO SHORTEN YOUR RESUME FOR READABILITY
Sentence Structure
It is not only okay to use sentence fragments in a resume. In fact, most resumes include sentence fragments.
A sentence: “I doubled the company’s sales in 6 months by adding new accounts.” A fragment sentence preferred: “Doubled company’s sales in 6 months by adding new accounts.”
SHORTEN Resumes that are Short and Sweet
Here are some tips for creating resumes that are short and sweet. These tips will help resume readers see you as a great applicant. Your credentials will stand out immediately.
Eliminate the summary of your experience.
People often include a summary of the experience at the top of a resume. The information in your summary belongs with your accomplishments within the body of your resume. Putting a summary of your experience at the top is unnecessary, is a reading burden, and wastes space.
Eliminate your high school graduation if you are a college graduate.
People who have to read resumes do not need to read that you have a high school diploma. The fact that you have started attending college or have graduated from college shows that you have a high school diploma or the equivalent of a high school diploma.
Eliminate full sentences for your accomplishments and skills.
- Increased revenue by 10%.
2. Managed a team to create nationally recognized software development process
3. Fluent in French, conversant in Spanish
4. Type 55 words per minute
5. Operated forklifts and narrow aisle trucks
Eliminate non-skill or education information on your resume.
Hobbies, interests, references, and personal recognition do not belong on your resume.
Include information on certificates and credentials you are studying or have completed.
Even if the certificates or credentials do not apply specifically to the job for which you are applying, a brief statement on these additional studies may broaden a resume reader’s view of your skills. There may be jobs beyond the one for which you are applying and for which these studies make you fit.
Include information on your major, minor, and other important studies.
1. Majored in computer science
2. Minored in math
3. Completed advanced studies in data analysis
4. Received a certificate for heat transfer engineering
5. Interned as an assistant project manager at [specific company]
6. Studied music for a year under the orchestra expert at [name of school]
Include a specific area on your resume for volunteer work.
Volunteer work and community service are important things to have on your resume. They are particularly meaningful to a person reading your resume when the experiences fit the job for which you are applying. List the organizations and functions just the way your list companies and skills or accomplishments in your resume.
10 Things to Leave Off Your Resume
Remember that a hiring manager will only spend seconds looking at your resume. Cutting the clutter is critical to your resume getting you an interview.
Recognize that you are sending personal information that stays in computer files for months to years.
Ask two questions when you are writing your resume.
- Will this information get you an interview?
- Will this information create risks to you or your family?
With these two thoughts in mind, I recommend that you leave the following information off your resume.
- Leave the statement “References provided upon request” off your resume. When employers want to conduct reference checks, they will ask you for references and tell you what type of people to include in your references.
- Leave a summary of your skills off the top of your resume. Skills belong in the content of your resume. Often, recruiters skip past a summary at the opening of a resume and go straight to the content. Listing your skills in the opening of your resume and in the content of your resume is redundant and a waste of the reader’s time.
- Leave fancy designs or colors off your resume. Your resume is not a website. It is a formal business document.
- Leave letters of recommendation off your resume. You can include letters of recommendation with your resume, but not in your resume.
- Leave the word “Resume” off your resume. You can put the word “resume” in the subject line of an email or in a cover letter, but do not title your resume, “Resume.” Putting the title “Resume” at the top is similar putting the word “Letter” at the top of a letter or the word “Email” at the top of an email.
- Unless your hobbies make you qualified for the job for which you are applying, leave your hobbies off your resume. Your list of hobbies is a tiring distraction for hiring and staffing managers, who read dozens to hundreds of resumes.
- Leave your picture off your resume.
- Leave personal and confidential information off your resume. The purpose of leaving this information off your resume is that you are releasing information that will not help you but may hurt you or your family. Specifically, leave this information off your resume.
- Leave your height and weight off your resume.
- Leave your ethnicity off your resume.
- Leave your physical description off your resume.
- Leave your marital status and information about your children off your resume.
- Leave your date of birth off your resume.
- Leave your social security information off your resume.
- Leave statements about your home ownership off your resume.
- Leave your income off your resume.
- Leave your financial information off your resume.
- Unless this information qualifies you for a job, leave your political, religious, or social affiliations off your resume.
- Leave anything negative about yourself off your resume: low or mediocre grade-point averages, career or business failures, criminal history, or statements about losing a job off your resume.
- If you have attended college, leave your information off your resume.
Is Your Job Resume Too Long?
Should resumes be one page or two? If you are you having trouble keeping your resume to two pages, cut common space wasting things. Either, from my experience, are fine. The more important issue is whether your resume has made your qualifications stand out.
Are you using puffery? Puffery means that you exaggerating, giving opinions, making unsupported statements, or creating an inflated image of yourself. You are puffing. You are revealing pride and arrogance. Some examples of puffery are the words “outstanding,” “high-powered,” “dynamic,” and “overachiever.” These words turn people off. Experienced resume readers just skip these words to find the skills and education you have. Some resume readers never read past the puffery. Cut the puffery.
Focus on hard skills in your resume. Hard skills are the things you can do. Soft skills are your personality.
Include hard skills in your resume. Cut the soft skills from your resume. Save soft skills for your interview.
Cut hobbies from you resume. The purpose of your resume is to get an interview. Your skills and education will get you an interview.
Most people who read your resume do not care about your hobbies.
Cut references from your resume. Until interviewers are giving you an offer, they usually do not check your references.
However, interviewers may enter your references into their database of contacts. Your references could become your competitors.
Cut the statement “References available upon request” from your resume. The statement serves no purpose. An employer will expect you to be willing to submit references.
Cut income from your resume. Giving your income on your resume takes space and may give interviewers a reason not to contact you. Advertisers often leave product prices out of ads. They create a reason for consumers to go the store. Advertisers and their clients want consumers to go the store to learn the price.
Streamline information. Put your street address, city, state, and zip code on one life. Put your email address and your phone number on one line. Put your college, degree, GPA, year graduated, and major on one line.
Reduce the font for your name to fourteen pixels.
Reduce the details about earlier employment. What you did 20 years ago is less important than what you are doing now. The interviewer may barely glance at your first job out of college. Put the details of your accomplishments in your current job.
Journalists use the inverted pyramid to organize a story. The inverted pyramid creates an image of how to structure text. Journalists put the most important information at the top of an article. They give more details to the most important information. They give few details to the unimportant parts of the story. They put less important information at the bottom of the story. Use the inverted pyramid for your resume.
Cut the summary from your resume. Your resume is a summary of your experience. A paragraph titled “Summary” at the top of your resume is a dangerous wall between your contact information and the details of your experience. The interviewer may never read past the “Summary” paragraph to see your terrific accomplishments. If you need to shorten your resume, cut the “Summary” paragraph.
If you are having trouble keeping your resume to two pages, you might try these suggestions. I have seen people use these suggestions to shorten their resume and to get job interviews and jobs.