So, you've been applying to jobs for months now, and it's rare for you to get a call back, let alone an interview. I'm going to talk about why. This is a worst-case scenario--and an actual resume I received for a Ruby on Rails Web Developer--that I guarantee can be flipped around. Let's take a look:
John Smith
123 Main Street
Los Angeles, California 90001
(213) 555-5555
js1987@emailme.com
Entry Level Web Design Skills (I Am The Webmaster/Owner of 2 Websites)
Speed Read Rate: 80-100 Words Per Minute
High School Diploma
Good attendance. Only 1 sick day because I eat a lot of organics.
Got the Highest Score on State Exam English Portion in the 3rd grade.
Certificate of Completion for Customer Interaction Training Program
Multilingual(English+German+Spanish)
IQ 146
Work Experience
Webmaster
11/2009-Present Making Money Off The Ads I Put On My Websites
Janitor
9/2006 - 4/2007(Relocation) ABC Company, Los Angeles, CA
Cleaning tables+chairs+racks
Education
8/2002 - 6/2006 Los Angeles High School, Los Angeles, CA
NO ARRESTS
NO CONVICTIONS
Okay, now let's play a game. Can we find ten things wrong with this resume? Sure, no prob.
- His first "job" isn't a job at all. It's labeled "Making Money Off The Ads I Put On My Websites." Grammar issues aside, this is NOT work experience.
- Can we even count how many useless pieces of information there are? I don't need to know his IQ, that he can read so many words per minute, that he eats organics which caused him to miss a day of work, or anything about his 3rd grade experiences.
- The description of his duties as a janitor... ? Not very detailed. If I were looking for a janitor who had cleaned windows in the past, his resume wouldn't come up in my search.
- Formattting... Ugh. I don't even know how to go into detail here. Ideally, I would get a name and contact information at the top, a BRIEF summary of experience, optionally an objective to tell me what kind of position he's looking for, and then we'd lead right into his work experience, cleverly outlined in short bullet points that are easy for me to read since I look at hundreds of these things each day. Below that, I'd want to see his education, possibly his fluency in English, Spanish, and German.
- NO ARRESTS, NO CONVICTIONS. Other than the fact that, in the U.S., it is impossible to be convicted without being arrested, this just isn't something I walk around telling people. It's the equivalent of telling your boss, "I haven't applied for any other jobs since I started working here." Whoop-de-do. Always implied is "yet."
- Now we need to address the fact that this guy responded to a position requiring two years of either web or software development experience... and he doesn't list anything to let me know that he's qualified for this.
- I know how old he is... js1987@emailme.com? Yeah. The kid was born in 1987. He's my brother's age. My brother is still in college, so this guy isn't the degreed and experienced individual I'm searching for.
- This may sound obvious, but there's nothing compelling me to pick up the phone. I guess this is a culmination of all the other problems with the resume--no objective or summary, no description of what he's done. The problem is that there's nothing of anything; even a little detail in one of those areas might entice me to pick up the phone if done correctly.
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