Five Things That Don’t Belong on Your Resume
Your resume is a chance to show a potential employer who you are, so you must include key information relevant to determining if you’d be a good fit for the position. But, you also don’t want to put details on the resume that are inappropriate or unnecessary.
While it can be hard to know what to include and what to leave off, here are five things you don’t want on any resume you send to employers:
- Your photo. You don’t want to include a picture for several reasons. First, it’s considered unprofessional. You don’t want to be judged on your appearance or create an impression based on the way you look. Instead, let the hiring manager get to know your skills from the resume before seeing your face.
- Personal information. This includes details about your marital status, race, religion, gender, height or weight. Employers don’t want to know these things because this could set the stage of a lawsuit based on discriminatory hiring. And, none of these demographic issues should be considered by an employer deciding whether to hire you, so there’s no reason to include them.
- Grammatical mistakes. Since your resume is your chance to show you’re a talented worker who is right for the job, silly mistakes will only undermine your efforts. Most hiring managers will disregard resumes with errors because they’ll assume you’d only make more mistakes going forward if they brought you on board.
- Irrelevant job descriptions. You want the hiring manager to easily see you have the relevant skills, so focus on jobs you’ve held in the past that have made you qualified for the position. Don’t make the employer weed through a long list of work that isn’t relevant to what you’re hoping to do.
- A long list of references. It’s best to provide references only on request so you can talk with your references in advance and give them the heads-up that they’ll be contacted.
With the right resume, you can impress any hiring manager and maximize your chances of landing an interview. SmartTalent can help you get your resume in front of companies hiring people with your skills and abilities, so give us a call today to find out how our staffing professionals can jumpstart your job search.
