Communicating achievements is cited as one of the key issues jobseekers consider a real challenge.

Some people are reluctant to be frank about what they do well; they feel squeamish about recounting tales of how they distinguished themselves against their peers and consider it bragging (and we all know that nobody likes an show-off!)

As a result, people tend to talk in generalities to take the focus off themselves. They pepper their responses with words like “we”,”our” and “the team”. They think that by communicating in this manner that they will appear modest and a team player.

In fact what they have done is obfuscate the truth and make communications unclear. This can hurt a jobseeker’s candidacy for a job where clear communications not self-effacing statements rate highly on most employer’s wish lists.

The jobseeker, in trying to give credit to everyone from the receptionist to the CEO, actually gives nothing away about himself and in doing so, has raised a red flag about his candidacy. Is he camouflaging his true involvement because he actually let “the team” do everything? It wouldn’t be the first job search consultant who would mistrust the “we” defence for apathy!

I’m not advocating jobseekers claim ownership of something that isn’t theirs. For instance, asserting that you “Successfully built the world’s tallest building which was delivered on time and on budget” is quite a stretch if you were the receptionist who photocopied plans for the architect!

In fact, using this same scenario, thousands of people who would be involved in the design and construction of this building could claim the success as their own.

So this is what I’m saying: claiming success for something that isn’t yours to claim will make you sound like you are big noting yourself and it won’t be true.

Instead talk about your part in the team or project. You won’t sound immodest, you won’t be bragging about saving the world, and you will allow the people evaluating your skills and abilities to gain insight into you and what you do well.

Here is an example:

“I was fortunate enough to work on the design team that created the world’s tallest building. My role in the team was to research engineering that has been done in the past and see whether we could use any of these methods to achieve optimum building stability. I was given six weeks to complete this research and during this time I uncovered a new, yet little known technology that would be perfect for the type of building materials and geological layout that we needed to observe. I delivered my contribution to the team ahead of the six week deadline and I was pleased to see that my recommendations were adopted by the Chief Architect.”

Clearly this is not bragging, this is not claiming a world achievement and it is truthful. It communicates the role, the expectations of the task and what was delivered. This example would speak volumes to a decision maker who is looking for clear insights into a potential candidate’s work performance.

When a person is hiring you, it doesn’t matter what the team did or how successful the team was. What matters is what part you played in that team and what you contributed that made a difference.

It is right to claim what is yours.

Let “the team” take care of themselves.

There are two ways to stand out in a crowd as far as resumes are concerned.

There’s the good way: This is the resume that is perfectly formatted in a contemporary, sharp, sophisticated design that showcases your skills and experience as an unbeatable candidate who blitzes the competition and begs to be snapped up.

Then there’s the bad way. There are many ways you can fail to impress but today we’ll look at the personal photograph. You see, including your image in your resume can be bad. Very bad.

It’s a painful fact. Very few of us look like George Clooney or Angelina Jolie (much to our collective regret I’m sure). And frankly while I can’t speak for George and Angie, I’d imagine that they’d probably prefer to think of themselves as talented and hard working rather than just good looking.

But I digress. Let’s explore the top three reasons you should remove your photograph from your resume. (Excuse me… please? Drag your eyes away from the pretty folk for a moment!)

1. It’s not important. If you have read my book or my previous articles on resume development, you would know that the most important information you want to convey to your reader is situated on the first page. Your best pitch, your greatest achievements, your most compelling value propositions are placed on that page. Does this then mean that one of the most important things you want to convey to your employer is your face? That’s it? That’s what you’re offering? Don’t you think that sounds just a little ego-trippy?

2. You failed to go the extra mile and do it properly and you’re instead conveying a slapdash, it’s-good-enough attitude. Most candidates don’t have their pictures taken professionally so if you’re not going to do it properly, just don’t do it at all. You know the type of photo I mean. The type where the executive dons his high-quality suit with the suave, sophisticated air of the entitled, a slight smile hovering on his lips indicating the untold secrets he holds for making an indecent profit. The type of photo where his hands rest lightly on the rich wood of the oak desk, cufflinks catching the light and gleaming with self-satisfied approval. Instead, what we usually are faced with is a poorly lit digital pic snapped in the kitchen just before a wedding; a dubious vision in an ill-fitting suit, gardenia in lapel, sweat on brow, and a box of Rice Crispies adorning the laminated countertop behind. A picture like this is not going to create recruiter excitement, that’s for sure. Or maybe you’re using the picture taken last summer where you are lounging by the pool, beer in hand. You sure look relaxed; like you never want to work another day in your life. Wait…is that a good thing to sell?

3. Plain old human prejudice. Your photo on your resume invites people to show prejudice against you. Why give the resume reviewer the ammunition to reject your candidacy before he or she even gets to see and speak to you? What if your eyebrows are too thick and bushy and the perceived “perfect” candidate doesn’t look that way? What if you look like the interviewer’s Uncle Jack or Aunty Mary who made Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters look like good samaritans? As much as we don’t like it and it’s not fair, people do have strong reactions to photos and it is an act of self sabotage (or sheer egocentricity) to invite critical scrutiny of the way you look before you ever get a chance to demonstrate your talents and expect a happy ending. Your candidacy could be rejected due to looks, age, religion, nationality or skin type and you’ll never even know it because you didn’t even get an interview. How is that fair to you?

You want to be selected on the skills and experience you offer and not allow people to objectify you in any way. A resume is not a social networking tool and you’re not building relationships here.

It’s a marketing document that sells the very best you have to offer.

Surely you are selling more than just a pretty face?

Some time ago, a client shared her story while we were developing her resume. She told me about her life at the hands of her abusive spouse and how, after years of suffering, she fled the family home to a shelter leaving behind all their possessions and with her children in tow. Years later, she had regained her confidence, had settled into a new life and she had secured a job as an Office Manager; a job she liked and for which she had strong aptitude and a history of accomplishment.

Her ability to overcome adversity was impressive and I told her so; and that was when she said those jaw-dropping words “I’d like you to include that in my resume”.

“In your resume” I repeated, not sure I’d heard her correctly.

“Yes” she nodded enthusiastically, “I think it will show my ability to rise above problems, find solutions and organise”.

Fast forward a few years later. I was developing a resume for a woman who had a distinguished 15-year marketing career prior to her extended absence for maternity leave and later, caring for the infant.

“It’s very important to me that you include my maternity leave in my career history” she said. “It will show people that I can triumph over pain, that I have responsibility and I’m stable, and that I’m creative. I want to include quite a bit of time marketing that aspect of my life”.

Then there was the young twenty-something job seeker who wanted to me to include her lawsuit against her last employer for sexual harassment. “It’s important” she advised sagely, “That people reading my resume know that I left because of the harassment, not because I’d done anything wrong”.

Well, you’d think after twenty years in this business nothing could surprise me but in each of these instances, I was gobsmacked.

Why would these professionals who had so much to offer, want to invite strangers into their personal lives? Why did they think that that employers would be less impressed by their professional competencies and achievements and instead, choose to be exposed to recounts of daily beatings, the pain of childbirth, and sleazy workplace behaviours?

Granted these are extreme cases; but in each of these situations the jobseeker failed to understand what the employer was looking for in an employee. They were too invested in what they wanted to say, than what the employer wanted to hear and they had painted a mind picture of how to communicate these parts of their lives in a way that they believed provided a positive “spin”. The only problem was that they never needed to mention any of these things at all, let alone try to sell the lessons learned!

Before attempting to develop a tenuous link between your life experiences and your professional life, delve into what you have achieved in the workplace first.

There are many ways to showcase your true talents that are more appropriate for an employer to assess without revealing your private life to the scrutiny of a stranger! It’s a strategy that can precipitate future discrimination, fast track dismissal of your candidacy for a job, and provide ample evidence that you cannot distinguish what is appropriate and what is not!

Letting it all hang out? Forget it!

No resume is ever read and no one ever gets interviewed or hired, unless the employer is trying to solve a problem or a series of problems.

Sales may be declining in a key territory, or the manager could be bogged down by routine administration; staff may be leaving in droves, productivity and morale is plummeting and costs are skyrocketing. Whatever the circumstances, the employer is looking for a problem solver.

How then, do you position yourself as the person who can solve these issues? (Especially if you’re one of those people who say: “I never do anything special; I just come in every day and do my job!”

Following, are three roles not typically associated with accomplishment. I’ll show you how problem solving talents can equal achievement!

Production Worker who never achieves anything (or so she thinks!)

People in production like to solve problems with safety (keeping incidents to a minimum), quality (keeping happy customers) and speed (meeting production targets) so they don’t have to pay costly penalty rates for overtime—another problem! Three bullet points that would show a Production Worker’s problem-solving abilities could be:

• Met all productivity targets without fail. Processed 100-high quality widgets hourly while exceeding quality control standards for scrap minimisation.
• Saved company hundreds-of-dollars weekly by preventing need for costly overtime payments.
• Commended for safety record—achieved 12 months daily activity with no safety breaches.

Administrative Team Member who never achieves anything (or so he thinks)

Many administrative professionals are gatekeepers for more senior staff; they talk to customers or disgruntled staff to save managers from the burden of dealing with routine matters. Essentially though, administrative professionals are experts in organisation. They restore order from chaos. Sometimes just reordering the filing cabinet can be the catalyst for improving efficiency by ending frustrating information searches. Let’s look at how problem solving can be presented to sell the talents of an administrative professional for the two instances mentioned:

• Liberated senior manager from the burden of routine tasks by acting as a personal gatekeeper. Resolved escalated customer and staff complaints to ensure manager remained on task and focused on business decision-making and revenue growth.
• Transformed haphazard filing system into a model of contemporary office practice. Colour-coded all files providing at-a-glance retrieval for all staff. Missing files and lack of accountability became of thing of the past as staff immediately embraced the newly devised “sign in/sign out” process.

Customer Service Operator who never achieves anything (or so she thinks)

According to many customer service operators, their job is to “answer the phones”. They have more influence than they realise. The role of a customer service officer is to retain customers, generate leads, exude goodwill and reflect the company’s reputation for professionalism! Customer service staff are problem solvers with the power to restore your faith in a company through their courtesy, speed/efficiency and professionalism.

• Surpassed personal and team targets for numbers of calls handled. Against a daily target of 100 calls, broke team records for averaging 125 a day for six consecutive weeks.
• Saved thousands of dollars in lost business by persuading 10 disgruntled clients to stay with the company in favour of taking business to a competing organisation.
• Won kudos from management for generating 50 “hot” leads to the sales department in 60 days outpacing peer efforts by almost 35%.

It’s not hard! Think of a problem and how you’ve solved it, and how by doing so, you’ve helped the company.

Achievements like these make business tick over every day. Never under-estimate your contribution! (Even when you don’t think you have done anything significant or been in a position to drive change).

And for companies, mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow. You’re the person they want, you just have to let them know it!

Cutting and pasting your current job description into the experience section of your resume speaks volumes about your slap dash, throw-it-all-together-in-a-minute approach and attitude. Is that really the impression you want to give?

The key problem with job descriptions (apart from the fact they are mind-numbingly boring to read and full of fluffy, nonsensical business-speak) is that they were written long before you moved into the role. They give no indication of what you achieved. (And as you should know by now, achievements are key to articulating your value and getting noticed by decision-makers).

Realistically, how could the following phrases, a typical one seen in a job description, ever begin to sell you?

Reference:  Sales Career Online.

• Demonstrates ability to meet or exceed sales quota.
• Complete understanding of pricing and proposal models.
• Demonstrates the ability to carry on a business conversation with business owners and decision makers.
• Maximises all opportunities in the process of closing a sale resulting in the taking of market share from larger competitors.
• Sells solutions and makes recommendations to prospects and clients of the various products/services the company offers to their business issues.
• Develops a database of qualified leads through referrals, telephone canvassing, face to face cold calling on business owners, direct mail, email, and networking.
• Assists in the implementation of company marketing plans as needed.

Boring? Yes definitely! It says nothing about you and what you’ve achieved. But…there is a way to use your job description to turn your resume from robotic to robust and it starts off by using just two phrases: “How did I?” and “How well did I?”

Think of each entry as an example and ask yourself:

• HOW DID I meet or exceed the sales quota?
• HOW WELL DID I meet or exceed the sales quota?

• HOW DID I sell solutions and make recommendations….
• HOW WELL DID I sell solutions and make recommendations?

Asking yourself those two phrases before each area of your job description will have you well on the way to writing powerful sentences that highlight your achievements.

Here’s an example of your draft response:

HOW DID I meet or exceed the sales quota?

• I met and exceeded the sales quota by establishing a follow-up campaign where I called all clients every three weeks.

HOW WELL DID I meet or exceed the sales quota?

• I generated an average of $5,000 a week in repeat business which far exceeded the quota of $3,500 and beat my nearest competitor by $1000 a week.

The achievement in your resume then becomes:

• Consistently exceeded sales targets by up to 43% and outpaced nearest sales team competitors by 28%. Successes attributed to personally developed follow-up campaign that kept product and company name at the forefront of customers’ minds.

Now this is an achievement! It is also an easy way to develop value-added structure to your resume by using those job descriptions as a guide. All you need to remember is “How did I” and “How well did I”?

Let’s make this the week that you revamp your resume with the aim of making every point made on it a winner. Are you ready to take on that challenge?

It’s a rare day that goes by where someone doesn’t ask me to critique his or her resume. To be brutally honest, most resumes are not up to par. From the spelling errors to the lousy formatting, from the boring, never-ending laundry lists of duties, to the straight copy-and-paste job descriptions full of fluffy business-speak, I can only say that medals should be bestowed on recruiters and HR professionals for having the staying power to trawl though them without jumping out the nearest window.

“Of course”, I hear you saying. “Naturally Gayle would say that! She’s a professional resume writer! But not all of us can afford a top notch writer to represent us, and some of us just want to go it alone!”

So for those people—you know the ones, the people who want to do their own tax returns, fix the leaky taps, build their own house extension, operate “Rambo” style on themselves and represent themselves in court, here’s the top 5 things you must do to have half a chance of competing against my clients.

1. The most important information; this is everything the employer/recruiter needs to know to sell you, should be in the first half of page one. Notice I say “everything ‘they’ NEED TO KNOW ABOUT YOU”. Yes I put that in capitals because it’s worth shouting out loud about this one. I didn’t say, what you want to tell the employer/recruiter. It’s what they want. Everything is about what they need to know, not what you feel warm and cosy about (this includes a project 20 years ago where you had your finest hour and you being part of the canoe rowing squad where you won first prize in 1985). The most important information includes: keywords (skills you have that are pertinent to the position), a powerful first paragraph that provides an overview of you and your experience and strengths, some key achievements to whet their appetite, and a pointer right at the top of the page that tells the reader what type of a job you want.
2. Don’t make your reader guess what type of job you’re pitching for by having to turn to your employment on page 2. At the top of the document state either what you are (eg, Senior Finance Manager ~ Manufacturing Sector) or what you want the reader to consider you for (eg, Business Development Manager and then second line, Hands-on Technical Background in Engineering and Manufacturing)
3. Make your document interesting to read. Look at your resume critically. Would you be fascinated by it? Excited to read it? Would it give you pleasure? Think of the last really bad book you read. Truth be told it was possibly one of those “new age” books on business you were given during a team work exercise at your place of business. Remember how you tried to read it a dozen times, but you kept re-reading the same paragraph over and over because it was so dull, you keep getting distracted? That book is probably the same as your resume. Revise everything in there. If phrases are “fluffy” (if you cannot grasp and understand an actual achievement), delete them ruthlessly. Delete anything that looks or sounds like a position description or a cliché. In their place, think of problems you had to overcome, how you overcame them, and the results of your actions. Then start the sentence off with the result (eg, Delivered a 50% increase in productivity) followed by the action (eg, via the development of a new computerised monitoring widget) followed by the original problem (that resolved history of time consuming, erroneous processing). Boring your reader senseless must be avoided at all costs.
4. Proofread. Proofread. (I’ll say it again) Proofread. Every resume sent to me for critiquing contains spelling and grammar errors. One of the best things you can do is to read it aloud to yourself. (Yes I do this as a professional resume writer too). If you find yourself turning blue and falling on the floor, then the sentence is too long. Revise it. Cut it in half. If you find yourself stumbling, then that is your head hinting to you that something isn’t quite right. Keep your grammar parallel. By that I mean that if you start a sentence with a word in the past tense—say, “Delivered” and half way through your sentence changes to “…overseeing and instructing…” the sentence has lost the plot and probably taken your reader with it. Revise.
5. Learn how to use the word processor properly because your document needs to look attractive as well as sound compelling. Learn how to change the size of the paper so it is appropriate for the country you are living in (or applying for) and adjust the spelling for the country you are living in (or applying for). Word processors are set with standard defaults which are usually for the United States. That’s fine if you live there, but if you live in Australia or elsewhere like the UK or Europe your resume will end up poorly formatted and the spelling will be wrong. Words such as organize, specialize, defense, labor, color, center are words that are correct in the United States. In Australia, these words are organise, specialise, defence, labour, colour, centre. While you’re at it, if you do not have the skills to create your own format and you either fill the page with goofy tables because you don’t know how to indent or tab, or you feel compelled to use one of Microsoft’s templates used by 90% of the jobseeking population, then please, spend a few dollars and take your content to a secretarial service where it will at least be typed with some style. There is nothing more amateurish as a resume were the dates are tabbed across the page, and content fills table blocks. Remember you’re trying to sell your skills as a professional, not as an incompetent typist.

Of course there are just as many “must nots” as there are “must haves” but those we’ll leave for another day. At least, until you get your “must haves” under control and implemented.

I created my business slogan “Unleashing your career with the power of words” many years ago as it resonated with me. Words have always had power. They can hurt someone’s feelings, they can wield power by inspiring decision makers to act. Politicians, spin doctors, advertising professionals and product marketeers have known the secret for decades: to get customers to buy and remain loyal they need to use the words that paint a picture and grasp the attention of the buyer.

Consider this excerpt from Sir Winston Churcill’s famous speech “Their Finest Hour”

…..If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: “This was their finest hour” ‘.

Too many people write passively and that is a surefire way to place a wall between the reader and the information you are trying to convey.

Imagine “Their Finest Hour” as many people write their own resumes:

“I think that you should be aware that things will be quite difficult very soon and if we don’t contribute to the team effort the situation could become very bad for a long time. It is important that everyone contribute to the project at hand to make a long-term difference.

Just not quite the same call to attention is it? Fails somewhat in inspiring people to fight for a cause!

Consider then a job seeker who is hoping to create excitement in his or her services by listing job duties in a résumé like this:

• Fixing computer equipment for customers
• Calling customers to provide quotations
• Meeting deadlines.

These examples are far from inspiring. They don’t command attention, they do not have power, they do not explain how competent the job seeker is or if he or she adds value for the employer. These is a definite disconnect between what the job seeker is telling the reader of the résumé and what that person actually wants to hear!

On the other hand, consider this:

• Continually surpassed all established deadlines for resolving glitches on computerised equipment under warranty. Repair average of 4 hours from diagnosis to resolution compared favourably with company set deadline of 6 hours and a record of zero returns following repair.
• Scored highest in the repair team for customer satisfaction, rating high in areas of accuracy of information, quick response and strong technical knowledge when providing quotations and feedback on issues.

These are the type of words that inspire a decision maker to act. Accomplishments are outlined and presented in a compelling manner and tell about the how and why and give numbers that speak volumes.

Unleash YOUR career…with the power of words.

This week’s top question came from “Jon” who asked:

“You always say that in a resume the last job should have the most information and to progressively decrease the amount of info for each job back in time. I understand why you would do that, but what do you do if your “show stopper” career moment is the middle of your career history? I don’t want to ignore this major project as it was really important to me in terms of size, scope and leadership. How can I make that “middle” job shorter when it really was my most important job?”

Great question Jon! Many people writing their resumes will have experienced this situation where the last couple of jobs may have been okay, but not world beaters and they like to hang their reputations on a project or job that really provided a showcase for what they can do (and haven’t had a chance to do since).

Now the drawback of devoting more resume “real estate” to a job that goes back perhaps three to five years or maybe even more, is that the strategy may backfire on you. Instead of you drawing attention to a once-in-a-lifetime project or job as you think the extra focus will achieve, what it may be doing instead is highlighting that you haven’t really done anything high profile, large or exciting for years. As you can imagine this is not exactly the point you’re trying to make! The last thing you want to do is draw the decision-maker’s attention to the fact that your recent jobs have failed to draw upon your skills (which by inference could mean that in that time, they could have become rusty).

On the other hand you don’t want to tuck this wonderful experience away and minimise its importance. So how to best showcase that one job or project without drawing negative attention or unbalancing the resume’s Career History section?

I’ll give you the answer, but before we go forward take a moment to consider:

• Have you used the same skills since that time? If so, then perhaps there’s no need to give this project or job so much emphasis after all. Consider instead the possibility of highlighting these talents in more recent jobs to show up-to-the-minute experience.
• Is the project or job extending back ten years or more? If so, you are probably walking a thin line as far as credibility is concerned. A job or project more than 10 years ago has the possibility of meaning more to you then the person reading your resume. Think about this critically. Is it important to you because you have a special personal investment or fondness for that time? Perhaps it’s time to let go. Raise it with job search consultants or hiring managers in your personal network to see how critical they believe it is.

If you have seriously looked at the pros and cons and still feel that the project is a crucial part of your past to be featured in your resume, then the solution is this: Don’t beat around the bush, don’t be half-hearted by hiding it in your career history.

Make a splash with it!

Force decision makers to see it and get excited by the possibilities of hiring you by featuring it on page ONE of your resume. (Yes that’s right, I said page one).

People who read my articles or have seen my writing know my philosophy when it comes to resumes (I’ll place my drawing below). Page one should “Make a splash”. Page one is where you answer the questions, brand yourself, create a compelling case for your hire. Page one should contain 70% of the most important information about you. The rest of the pages prove and cement your claims.

If we are making a splash on page one of your resume, then we’re going to showcase that project that means so much to you. Create a heading called “Project Highlights” or “Career Milestones” or “Career Highlights” and then place three, four or even five bullet points that sell your expertise in that particular project or job. You can even categorise those bullets by choosing examples that showcase the different areas of your expertise. For instance, like this:

• Budget Management: Presided over $10M operational budget for international project–rolling out SAP to 14,000 desktops.
• Change Management: Won buy-in from an initially hostile staff reluctant to accept system changes and fearing job losses. Drove a process of transparent communications that….
• Technical Troubleshooting: Resolved long-term issue with potential to stop project in its tracks by….

See what I mean? By removing information that is unbalanced in the career history and creating a splash with it on the first page, you are taking away the problem of dates and lengths of time since you put those talents to use.

You can now reduce the information in the Careers History/Professional Experience section to describe the role in more appropriately condensed form, safe in the knowledge that you are not raising red flags and that you have made your point about your skills and the depths of your experience early in the document.

The Resume Plan (C) Gayle Howard

Your prospective employer, a recruiter, or hiring manager is not your best buddy and not your confidant.

Yes, these people want to know about you, your background and your achievements, but they don’t need to know all about it!

Many people writing their own resumes think everything needs to be explored, without knowing that every revelation can be an act of self-sabotage. So let’s look at items regularly included on do-it-yourself resumes that should be shared only with your best friend.

• Reasons for leaving. People still regularly include this potentially self-sabotaging information on resumes as incredible as it may sound. Frankly, it doesn’t matter whether you were made redundant, you chose to resign before the company went broke (imagine how this would look if you were the Chief Financial Officer), or you had a difference of opinion with the supervisor. It doesn’t matter what you write or how innocent you think it is. Someone will twist the meaning and it won’t be in your favour. The resume is not the place for this information.
• Salary Information: Another inclusion in do-it-yourself resumes that can stop your candidacy in its tracks. Too high a figure and you can be discounted from roles before you even get to prove your worth; too low a figure and you have lessened your value for roles paying more. (Note: some advertisements ask you to include salary information: if that’s the case, put in a figure range wide enough to cover all bases and include in the cover letter, never the resume).
• Personal Information: Unless you are a model or an actress the employer does not need to know your height and weight. The employer also does not need to know your religion, your birthday or your place of birth (at least in Australia and the US. Check the requirements of other countries particularly in Asia and surrounds). Similarly the decision maker is not interested in a dissertation on your feelings about existentialism, your adoration of your new puppy, or that you love walking along the beach with the wind in your hair and digging your toes in the sand. Unless sand toe-digging is your occupation and you are an expert in the field, you sound like a Miss World contestant.
• Clichés: We have talked about this before and it cannot be reinforced enough. Scrap the clichés unless you want the reader of your resume to roll around laughing at the thought of yet another candidate patting himself on the back for having: Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, a solid work ethic and a strong team spirit, as well as being hard working and reliable.
• Personal situations: Not too long ago I saw a resume that began the current employment with this: “Secured role as Office Manager, after leaving my husband after a brutal nine years of marriage. Relocated with children to a different area and despite threats, calls to police and continued violent episodes, settled into the new role quickly. With daily beatings no longer part of my daily life, I successfully committed myself to the job, learning many new skills”. This provides personal information no-one needs to know. It also gives the decision maker the opportunity to pre-judge the candidate based on his or her personal beliefs and perhaps, potentially be concerned for the wellbeing of existing staff. Madness.

Resume self-sabotage goes on every day and most people don’t even know why their applications were ignored. Are you one of them?

A fun site that makes a word “cloud” of oft-used words and phrases is wordle.net. However unexpected opportunities present themselves with Wordle that will allow you to see the ‘big picture’ of your resume development. From your existing resume, highlight the entire document and click on “Edit” and “Copy”. Now make your way to the wordle.net site, paste your text in the space provided and click on “Go”. What do you see? Do you see action words, key words that define your industry and market, a powerful representation of you? Or… do you see a predominance of passive words such as “responsibilities included” or “duties”.

Your Wordle resume cloud will be able to point out in a visual sense the passive or powerful nature of your resume. Does your cloud represent you the way you see yourself?

Just for fun, here’s my cloud taken from the home page of Top Margin here