Make Sure Your Résumé Isn’t Wasting My Time
When companies need to hire someone, they resort to what they feel is a process that works, and all too often, it’s a black-and-white decision. It has to be. The person screening résumés has a stack of 200–400 or more applications in front of them, and they have to narrow it down to two piles—”yes” or “no.” So, when you submit a résumé, make sure your résumé isn’t wasting my time. It won’t actually be my time, but it will be someone’s time, and that is the way they’ll look at it.
I’ve seen some screeners include a “maybe” pile, but usually, it’s only the beginners who do that. The ones who have been screening résumés for a while stick to “yes” or “no”.
Novice screeners begin with a huge pile of résumés and end up with a large pile of résumés. Professional screeners start out with that same huge pile of résumés, but they end up with just a few résumés and a notepad full of questions.
Your job is to make your résumé one of the few that “makes the cut.” The way to do that is to ensure there are no mistakes. It’s not enough to have a good résumé, you have to have a near perfect résumé.
There are several “keys” to doing that. One is to make sure you have no useless information on the résumé. By useless information, I mean any information that is not relevant to the job—things like religious affiliations, whether you coach your child’s baseball or soccer team, how many children you have, and so forth.
Unless your job involves singing in a church choir, we don’t need to know that you do that. Nor do we need to know that you coach your son’s Little League team, or that you have four children.
Keep the information you provide brief and to the point. Cite relevant accomplishments, not responsibilities—or at least keep responsibilities to a minimum. See the blog I did on responsibilities and accompllishments for a few pointers.
And when you finish writing your résumé, take a little time to include a good cover letter. It’s our opinion that every résumé needs a cover letter. You can read about it here.
You can scour the site to read more about the different ways to make a good résumé, or you can pick up the book and get all of them.
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Giacomo Giammatteo is the author of gritty crime dramas about murder, mystery, and family. And he also writes nonfiction books including the No Mistakes Careers series as well as books about grammar, publishing., and children’s fiction and nonfiction.
When Giacomo isn’t writing, he’s helping his wife take care of the animals on their sanctuary. At last count, they had forty animals—seven dogs, one horse, six cats, and twenty-five pigs.
Oh, and one crazy—and very large—wild boar, who used to take walks with Giacomo every day.
He lives in Texas where he and his wife have an animal sanctuary with forty loving “friends.”
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