4 Ways Your Resume is Selling You Short

Are you sending in applications and resumes to many different employers, but not getting very many interviews? Starting to wonder if something is wrong with your resume and causing recruiters to pass you by?

As you can probably imagine, hiring managers and those reviewing your resume spent little time on each application, quickly filtering out candidates based on perceived shortcomings. In fact, there are many ways in which your resume could be selling you short and failing to capture the attention of employers.

The following are four common ways your resume may be selling you short.

1.  Your resume does not offer a career narrative

Imagine you are sharing an elevator with someone capable of landing you your dream job.  You only have thirty seconds with him or her. What would you say? Would you talk about your high school paper route or share all the things you have done in your life that qualify you for your dream job.

Many resumes are just an education and vocation timeline.  Instead, the details in your resume should tell a story and help your potential employer see how you have worked and gained experience to prepare for this particular job.

2. You have unqualified achievements

An unqualified achievement is when you claim to possess a certain skill or talent, without having any supporting evidence. For example, a candidate may write that they have increased consumer engagement with a particular brand. A much better way to go about it is to write that you increased the number of social media interactions by a certain percentage within a certain time.

3. Your resume lacks consistency

Consistency is demonstrated in resumes by making sure you use the same formatting, font, and that your descriptions always take a similar approach. Many common inconsistencies are forgetting periods at the end of bullets, switching from past to present tense, or having some headings underlined while others are in italics.

4. Your resume design is overkill

Without question, your resume must be aesthetically pleasing.  But that does not require colorful borders or overly complicated graphics. Spending too much time on design work will take away from the substance of your resume.

You may not know this, but a lot of companies use what is called an applicant tracking system (ATS). ATS is just software that analyzes resumes and filters out unqualified applicants. The software cannot always decipher complicated graphics, so your designs may exclude your resume.

Final Thoughts

Here are a few final things to consider to make sure your resume is not holding you back.  First, consider hiring a proofreader or finding someone with an editing eye to review your resume and catch any spelling or grammatical errors. Second, try your best to fit your resume on one page. That does not mean shrinking the font, but rather, only including the most relevant information that fits with your narrative.

Still looking for where to send your newly updated resume?  See who is hiring at CyberCoders.com.