Balance creativity with professionalism to ensure that your resume gets you the interview call.
You've used all your creative juices to build a resume that stands out in the crowd — but have you gone overboard?
Hiring managers and human resource professionals in the US shared the most unusual resume blunders they came across in a recent CareerBuilder.com survey:
- Candidate included that he spent summers on his family's yacht in Grand Cayman.
- Candidate attached a letter from her mother.
- Candidate used pale blue paper with teddy bears around the border.
- Candidate explained a gap in employment by saying it was because he was getting over the death of his cat for three months.
- Candidate specified that his availability was limited because Friday, Saturday and Sunday was 'drinking time'.
- Candidate included a picture of herself in a cheerleading uniform.
- Candidate drew a picture of a car on the outside of the envelope and said it was the hiring manager's gift.
- Candidate's hobbies included sitting on the levee at night watching alligators.
- Candidate included the fact that her sister once won a strawberry eating contest.
- Candidate explained an arrest by stating, "We stole a pig, but it was a really small pig."
- Candidate included family medical history.
"Employers do appreciate creativity in job applicants because rooting through piles of resumes often times can be a monotonous task," says Rosemary Haefner, Vice-President, HR, CareerBuilder.com.
"However, the key is to balance that creativity with professionalism. You want to stand out as someone unique but also as someone with applicable experience who can add value to the company."
Road to resume success
Haefner offers the following tips to create a resume that will land you the interview call.
Keep out personal stuff
Your personal life is just that — personal. Hiring managers don't need to know personal information such as what your waistline measurement is or where you spend your summer vacations.
Instead, include information on activities that are business-related such as memberships in professional organisations and community service involvement.
Simple, bold and professional
Three key ideas to keep in mind when formatting your resume are: simple, bold and professional.
Instead of flashy formatting and stationery with borders or graphics, create a clean and polished document on resume paper with consistent formatting for headings and bullet points.
Additionally, to gain a hiring manager's attention, use strong action words such as 'achieved' and 'managed' instead of unconventional fonts or coloured text.
One size does not fit all
If you're applying for a sales position, it wouldn't make much sense to focus on your experience in an unrelated field such as education or information technology.
Not only do you want to play up achievements and experience specific to each individual job to which you are applying but also be sure to provide quantifiable results. For example, it's easy to say that you have experience in sales, but employers will take note if you say that you were responsible for a 10 per cent growth in overall sales.
Review the resume
Two sets of eyes are better than one.
After you have proofread your resume a few times, ask someone else to review it. A second pair of eyes may be able to catch mistakes you missed and could provide a fresh perspective on how to improve your resume.
The survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 2,627 hiring managers and human resource professionals in the US.
— Courtesy Careerbuilder.com
