Bad resumes and cover letters are the quickest way to turn off an employer.
First impressions are lasting impressions. Unless potential employers are considering internal candidates, their first impressions of job candidates come from resumes and cover letters. Make a good first impression and improve your odds of moving to the next level in the hiring process. Fail to impress (or worse, succeed in making a bad impression) and you can say goodbye to a lucrative job opportunity that really would have been perfect for you.
The top mistake job seekers make is failing to even include cover letters for resumes. No recruiter wants to waste time on an applicant who can’t be bothered to complete this simple step. Read on to learn about the other common mistakes job seekers make on their resumes and cover letters.
Keyword Stuffing and Cramming in Too Much
Yes, you definitely want to use keywords that parrot the “must haves” HR is looking for in candidates for a specific position, but there’s an art to keyword use. If you overuse key buzzwords or use them in unnatural ways, it will be obvious you’re trying to pad your resume with certain keywords. Sure, your resume may pass the automated screening system, but it will likely turn off live recruiters.
Another common mistake recruiters hate? Use of tiny fonts and trying to load in as much information as possible. Any skilled executive resume writing professional will tell you it is far better to use fewer words but more effectively highlight your most important skill sets.
Making Careless Errors
It seems like a no-brainer, but a shocking percentage of cover letters and resumes include not only grammatical errors, but spelling errors that could easily be avoided by simply performing a quick spell check. Especially when you have your eye on an executive-level position, spelling errors are completely unacceptable. They tell potential employers you are careless and do not pay attention to details. Those are definitely not traits that will land you a job or even an interview.
Being Vague and General
Keep in mind recruiters may receive thousands of resumes. Winning resumes provide a quick punch list of your specific skills. Instead of stating on your resume you “worked with the marketing staff,” state you “led a team of six lower-level employees and boosted productivity 45 percent while reducing expenditures by $2.7 million.”
Not Selling Yourself
When you’re seeking a c-level or any other executive-level position, don’t risk missing out on the perfect, lucrative opportunity because your resume does not impress sufficiently to land an interview. Once you make it to the interview phase, you can sell yourself in great detail and show the hiring authorities why you are the right candidate. However, you can’t sell yourself in person if you don’t first sell yourself on paper with a resume and cover letter that stands out.
When Is Imperfection Preferable?
Resumes
There are some areas of life where perfection is not what you want. Friendships don’t need perfection to be good, right? In fact, the people who pretend to be perfect rarely have a lot of friends because perfectionists keep others at arm’s length so the world doesn’t find out they aren’t perfect, after all.
Relationships are stable because we give each other room to fail and correct our mistakes. We don’t need to be perfect in order to be loved or liked. We do need to be able to admit when we are wrong and be willing to fix it.
Some Things Must Be Perfect
As endearing as a mistake can be in a friend, there are times you don’t get a do-over.
Resumes are a perfect example of this, because there isn’t a relationship established yet. Spelling errors aren’t going to get you much more than a ribbing from your grammar-Nazi friend, but that same error will get your resume cast aside by the HR person assigned to fill the position. The HR person is going on a quick first impression based on your resume, but your friend is looking at your mistakes in context of your friendship.
Make Sure Your Resume Meets Professional Standards
If your resume isn’t resulting in job interviews, ask that grammar-Nazi friend to help by giving you a resume critique. People who have professional standards for writing got there by making lots of mistakes and correcting them, over and over again. The problem isn’t that your resume is imperfect. It’s that you haven’t dealt with the imperfections yet.
Resumes need to meet professional standards that cover more than spelling. Polishing your resume so it shines with perfection is a perfect way to prove you are worth considering for a position. Once you are at your new job, you can share some imperfections with your new friends.
Criticism is kind of painful, because nobody likes to be wrong. But without constructive criticism we’d all be in a fantasy world assuming everything is fine and wondering why things aren’t happening the way we imagined they would. Particularly when it comes to your career, criticism is a valuable tool. But that tool has to be in the hands of somebody who knows how to use it for your benefit.
A Professional Critique of Your Resume/Cover Letter Does 3 Things
- Professional Perspective — A Professional Resume/Cover Letter Critique should be just that: professional. You want someone who is going to look at your cover letter and resume with the same perspective that potential employers, recruiters, and HR people will be looking at them. After all, these are the people who you are hoping to impress with that cover letter and resume, so it makes sense to write them with that goal in mind.
- Experienced Advice — It isn’t that helpful to find out what’s wrong with your cover letter or resume if you don’t know how to fix it. A resume critique from Professional Resume Services includes concrete steps you can take to make improvements and provides insights on why these steps are suggested.
- Immediate Return on Investment — As soon as you get your critique back, it includes a plan of action that you can immediately implement to get your career search back on track. The 3-4 page report catalogs every detail that needs to be improved and how to go about that improvement.
It doesn’t cost as much as you’d spend on a big date night, but it is worth every penny. A resume/cover letter critique from Professional Resume Services will give you an understanding of the problems and a way to fix those problems, making this criticism something you’ll appreciate getting.
Sometimes A Critic Is A Good Thing
Resumes
Okay, criticism does usually have a bad rap, but when you look at the definition of “critic” in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it reads like this —
a : one who expresses a reasoned opinion on any matter especially involving a judgment of its value, truth, righteousness, beauty, or technique
b : one who engages often professionally in the analysis, evaluation, or appreciation of works of art or artistic performances
Doesn’t that sound like a good thing? I think it does, particularly when you are talking about a resume or cover letter. A good resume and cover letter are truly works of art, the product of skill and technique. They put on a performance displaying your qualifications for a starring role: the job you are applying for. Wouldn’t you want to make sure your resume and cover letter passed the high standards of a professional critic? After all, another professional critic will be reading these documents and deciding whether or not you pass the test to get called in for an interview.
Why You Should Hire A Resume Critic
One of the best investments you can make is the Resume Critique because you are paying for a professional assessment of your resume (and cover letter, if you choose) by a certified resume writer. Certified resume writers earn that qualification by passing necessary tests and standards are high. A critic who is certified in their field counts as a professional in every sense of the term.
When a professional critic looks at your resume and cover letter in order to give you an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses along with a plan for improving those weak spots, that’s a good thing.
A Great Graduate Gift Suggestion
Resumes
You know the story; someone you love is graduating and you want to give them a gift. But you don’t want it to be a gift that doesn’t really help get them on their feet with adulthood. You want your graduation gift to make a difference for the future.
An Entry Level Resume is a great gift because it is a service that results in a customized, professional resume that displays a graduating student’s coursework, internships, early experiences, and skill sets. It includes an initial consultation and unlimited email support, which really can help that first job search and the entry-level resume, a cover letter, and a thank you letter in both ASCII and PDF versions for electronic submissions.
That unlimited email support can come in handy for a newbie in the job market, and the benefit of a professional resume writer working with your graduate to clarify their skill sets and highlight what might be missed is worth more than you think.
Because a professional resume writer is tuned into what employers are looking for and does this all the time, a process that is painfully convoluted and prone to mistakes becomes a challenge skillfully met. They work with things like keywords and SEO and can write for the computer that screens the resumes as well as the human who reads the resumes that got through the initial filter.
If you don’t do that all the time, it’s tricky. Even an English major will have some trouble with writing a resume for today’s job search because it does take more than writing skills.
So consider this graduate gift suggestion: an Entry Level Resume from Professional Resume Services.
Every once in a while someone asks, “Do I always need a resume?” The reason they wonder is because there are many other ways that your information gets to potential employers. Between online profiles, electronic applications, and your personal website, there could be a point when resumes are no longer required, right?
Wrong.
Most of the time a resume is going to be the only way you stand out from the crowd to a potential employer. Many times you will be asked to bring a copy of your resume to an interview because that paper resume is going to be passed around in hiring discussions. Your resume is your chance to customize your sales pitch to the specific job description and give an impression that goes beyond the template of electronic data input. It’s true that there will be an occasional exception. When NOT to use a resume is a matter of knowing exactly why that resume is not needed.
A resume will not be needed if the company specifically tells you they don’t want one. Or, maybe you won’t need a resume if you are working for someone who knows you very well.
But here’s the reason it’s good to have a resume, even if a potential employer doesn’t want one: Your resume has all your information condensed into one place. This comes in handy when you are filling out the forms they are using instead of a resume. It’s just a lot easier to have your work history and dates written down instead of trying to accurately recall your hiring date for the job you had five years ago. I think you will always need a resume when you come in for an interview, even if you don’t give it to anyone.
Are You Ready For A Resume Package?
Resumes
This is the time of year when packages are everywhere. From the shipping packages going past in the delivery trucks to the packages wrapped in fancy paper with a bow on top, you are going to see more of them as the month progresses. But what is a package, really?
A package is a promise of good things bundled into a single unit.
There may be one good thing or several good things inside, but you have to open it to find out what that package holds. Sometimes your idea of a “good thing” is different than the giver’s, but the idea of a promise inside the package is one that is universal. Professional Resume Services offers several packages and they all hold a promise inside:
What is the promise in each of these packages? It is the promise of a future made hopeful by effectively showing the best of your past. When a potential employer is able to see the best about a candidate, that employer is more apt to see how they will be a good fit for their enterprise. You or the person you are gifting will not need all these packages, but each holds the same promise and one of them is right for anyone in the workforce.
As the year wraps up and all the packages are opened, the future looks brighter when your packages hold the good things you need.
Two Qualities All Resumes Should Show
Resumes
Your resume is a compilation of your career for the purpose of evaluation. The reader of your resume is looking for indications you will be suitable for a specific opening and that reader uses your resume to determine if an interview should be scheduled. One way to categorize what will be looked for is summed up in two areas: learn and lead.
The ability to learn is essential no matter which position you are filling in an organization. From the top executive to the lowest rung of the career ladder, if you aren’t continually seeking to learn how to increase your effectiveness, you are dead weight. This can be shown in a resume through several means:
- seminars and classes attended
- organizations and volunteer activity
- certifications
The ability to lead is really the ability to think and act independently for the good of the group. Some of this ability isn’t going to show in a resume — having the strength of character to avoid gossip, for instance. Still, a resume can show that you have accomplished goals. The positions you have held in any organization, the time spent as a member and the activities you participate in all show leadership by example even when they are not “head” positions. Your references will reveal what kind of person you are, which indicates what kind of worker you probably will be.
During an interview, you are assessed in the light of your resume. The impression the resume gave is adjusted to include the face-to-face interaction and the whole package is considered. Will you be able to learn the job? Will you be able to do the job well even when distractions occur? Will you be a positive force in their particular workplace? If your resume hasn’t shown that you might fit, you will probably not be called in for that interview.
If your resume hasn’t resulted in being called in for any interviews, maybe it’s time to look at it again. Does it show that you know how to both learn and lead? Is it well written? Professional Resume Services has carefully built a site with many ways to help you develop an excellent resume for distribution. Explore the tips and services and see how your resume can be one that gets you that interview and the opportunity to learn and lead in a new job.
