Although your resume, whether online or paper, plays a pivotal role in whether or not you get an interview, the things you leave off are as important as what you keep on.
Eye catching headlines, outstanding job summaries and glowing recommendations are all vital ingredients in a killer profile or resume, but you can quickly quench a hiring manager’s fire by leaving in certain items. If your profile contains these cringe-worthy things, the good news is that removing them is quick and easy.
- Incorrect job descriptions
It may seem like a small thing, but when recruiters see that you’ve used the present tense when describing your responsibilities or accomplishments at a former position, it’s confusing. You may have updated your resume, but did you remember to freshen your LinkedIn profile?
Every time you change positions you need to update your former job description. Take a few moments to look over all of them, making sure that everything listed under your previous jobs is written in the past tense.
KDS recruiters, as well as hiring managers, often spend mere seconds reviewing the many profiles that cross our desks daily. You don’t want a simple grammatical mistake to cause us to pass you by.
- Listing common skills
No one is questioning your Microsoft Word abilities, but if something as common as Word or PowerPoint appears before less common skills such as being multi-lingual or having past programming experience, you’ve just missed a perfect opportunity to be recognized as unique.
A much better strategy would be to place your highly-desired skills first. Recruiters need to have a good reason for choosing you over everyone else, so give it to them, and give it to them early.
- Educational overkill
While education is always a plus, recruiters and hiring managers really only want to know about the courses you’ve taken that are relevant to your career. Overload your profile here, and you run the risk they’ll miss important information.
When structuring this section, list the classes that best showcase your skills, including any taken outside of school, and dump the rest. Outside courses prove you are proactive when it comes to growing your skill set.
- The wrong profile photo
While it isn’t necessary to don a three-piece suit or designer dress, you don’t want to be too casual and risk being passed over because of a less-than professional photo. First impressions can only be made once, and your photo is the first thing people see. Make sure it is flattering, you are smiling, and look confident and self-assured.
- Too much information
If your resume or profile has wordy job descriptions, edit! You want recruiters to easily see what makes you more desirable than other candidates. At KDS Staffing, we see hundreds of online profiles. If yours is bogged down with too much information, odds are we aren’t going to have time to read it all.
Pattern your profile after your resume, and use bullet points instead of paragraphs of text. That way, the important information will be easy for us to spot.
David Klein is a leading Executive IT Recruiter & Headhunter with over 15 years industry experience. As Manager of Recruitment Strategy for KDS Staffing, Inc., he has achieved industry-leading success. David has successfully led, trained and introduced many in the art of Executive Recruitment and Headhunting. If you or your organization would like to discuss hiring needs, contact David at 646-650-2833 or david@kdsstaffing.com.
