When Bad Resumes Happen to Good IT People
Even one error can keep you from getting your foot in the door, but stupid mistakes find their way onto the smartest resumes.
If you’re like a lot of workers out there, the top of a new year seems as ideal a time as any to launch the hunt for a new job—if you’re lucky, you’ve just received your year-end bonus and your next one is far away. If you haven’t, you’re likely hoping to get one next year, even if you have to go elsewhere to get it.
Yet even where bonuses are not a concern, once the mood for new year’s resolutions strikes a less-than-perfect employment situation is ripe for the picking, or picking on.
But before even finding a job worth applying for, one needs a resume that is worth a recruiter looking at twice, and for most people, this hasn’t been updated in the two, four or eight years. And those that work with lines of code and computers all day have not likely tuned up their writing skills in years.
“Recruiters often have hundreds of resumes to review and will make split second judgments about you based on your resume. Think of it as the sales brochure for you—it has to demonstrate a successful track record that makes them want to talk to you. Attention to detail is critical,” said Lynee Sarikas, director of the MBA career center at the College of Business Administration at Northeastern University.
Below are five of the easiest mistakes to make, and ones that could lead to a painful missed opportunity.
1. Typos
The first mistake may seem the most obvious, and therefore easiest to avoid, but typos happen to everyone—especially people whose jobs do not involve writing.
“Your resume needs to be grammatically perfect. If it isn’t, employers will read between the lines and draw not-so-flattering conclusions about you, like: ‘This person can’t write,’ or ‘This person obviously doesn’t care,’” says Monster.com career coach Peter Vogt.
It’s not likely you’ll catch a small gaffe on a resume you’ve Read more…