You're Only Perfect Twice: At Birth and on Your Resume~At Birth and on Your Resume

Focusing on years of experience rather than on accomplishments is another common mistake. It telegraphs to the recruiter or employer that you have done the same thing over and over again throughout your career; you have a comfort zone and cannot operate beyond it. Instead, a focus on accomplishments demonstrates depth of experi

You transcend (or should I say descend) from embellishment to misrepresentation when you stretch the facts beyond credibility, such as when you make up degrees or positions. One popular area on a resume that seems to attract embellishment is Education. Candidates always want to present themselves as highly educated; they push the limits to rise above their competitors. The first resume “fact” that any self-respecting employer or recruiter verifies is a person’s education. Many companies do this quick and easy check before they even pick up the phone to chat with you or consider scheduling an interview. Don’t embellish your education.

Job hopping produces more red flags than a May Day parade in Moscow. If your resume lists many positions, each of which was held for a short period of time (from one to two years or less), despite the best of reasons or excuses (e.g., merger, downsizing, company gone out of business), chances are you will not be viewed in a positive light.

Quantify the impact of your actions in your previous positions. Facts, figures, and numbers help to do this. For example, how many accounts did you work on? How many employees did you supervise? How much revenue did you generate?

Ideally, your resume should be steered toward conveying why you are the perfect candidate for one specific job or job title. Good advertising is targeted to a very specific market or audience. Your profile can and should be targeted for different types of positions. Targeting your profile requires you to be absolutely clear—or at least that you appear to be clear—about your career direction. Whether you have a job or are out of work, there is no better time than the present to chart the path of your future career so you have a clear target that will meet your goals and be personally fulfilling.

Properly written, a profile will generate the interest to get your resume read and not merely skimmed. Sometimes it takes longer to write the profile than the resume.

There are obvious advantages to this combined approach: It maximizes the advantages of both kinds of resumes, avoiding potential negative effects of either type. One disadvantage is that it tends to be a longer resume, but in today’s employment market, that may not be a problem. Another negative is that it can be repetitious: Accomplishments and skills may have to be repeated in both the “functional” section and the “chronological” job descriptions; this may not be a bad thing,

The problem with this style is that it is hard to tie a specific claim of accomplishment to a particular job. The proper context is obscured and it is difficult to verify the statements being made.

Sadly, most of the time, the answer is a patent demonstration of laziness or superiority (or a combination of both): the individual was too bu

While it may be your job history, it can still be written in a way that creates interest. If you write with that goal in mind, your final product will be very different than if you just present your job history. Show some enthusiasm and create a masterpiece. If you