The quickest ways to get your job prospects up to date are:
- Clean up your resume
- Find out where to post your resume
- Prepare for an employment assessment and learn about yourself by taking a personality test.
You might be an outdated job seeker if you use:
- Any form of manual-typewriter to create a resume
- “White text” for keyword paragraphs in your resume thinking we are cool with deception
- Your spouse’s email or voice mail thinking no one is going to notice
- Resume file services to distribute your resume to random inboxes not knowing we never open those emails
- Include a photo of yourself in the resume thinking one look into your baby blues tips the scale in your favor
- Font sizes larger the 12-point because the biggest font-sizes does not win the job
- Randomly bold words at different locations not realizing this appears really jacked-up
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- Phrases similar to “References Available Upon Request” – we know
- Statements comparable to “Excellent written and verbal communication skills” – this would the minimum standards at most j-o-b’s
- Expressions similar to “Works well under pressure” – this would be a regular work expectation
- An objective statement in the resume – because this is 1930’s agriculture America
- Your material status, spouse’s and or off-spring names believing we hire based on this tie-breaker insight
- The word “blessed” to have had such as family; as if saying you hated them would not be edgier
- The word “beautiful” to describe these family-types because your gene pool counts at my company
- Hobbies not related to the job because you think this will create “a real connection”
- Your charity work as a tie-breaker against the non-charity candidates
- The word Manger when you mean Manager and blame the spell-checker
- A PDF file to hide those pesky red and green squiggle-underlines ‘cuz you ain’t technical enough
- Fancy script, comic sans or other non-business fonts to show us yourpersonality
- Fleur-de-lys, filigree or other “cutesy” icons or graphics for bullets on experience statements
- Those itty-bitty hieroglyphic-iconography designed to explain things like phone number, email, address and zip code
- Any of these Kiss of Death words or phrases: Result-Oriented, Results-Driven, Seasoned Professional, Open-Door Manager, Key Player, All, Other, Every, Any, Team-Player, Out of the box thinking, Can work independently, Decisive, Detailed oriented, Duties, Dynamic, Effectively, Enthusiastic, Extensive experience, Good communicator, Good listener, Hands-on Technician, Hard worker, High-Energy, “I”, Power / Powerful, Proactive, Problem solver, Proven Leader, Responsible / Responsibility, Strong-[anything], Succeeded, Successful, Successfully, Thinker (all forms: strategic thinker, tactical thinker deep-thinker), Utilize (all forms: Utilized, Utilizing)
Submitted by Dirk Spencer. Dirk is a former government analyst turned corporate recruiter and author of Resume Psychology Resume Hacks & Traps Revealed - Beat the Machine. Be Seen. Get Hired!
