In writing your Resumes (Not CV if not academically inclined), beware of these exceptions:
📍 Address: You need not put an address. Simply putting “Location”. Sometimes in putting this, you shoot yourself in the foot. Why? Most recruiters know that proximity is key and clients would have you know that when some candidates resume after promising that it wouldn’t be a problem during interviews, it would be their Nos 1 reason to come late to work and also for security reasons.
📍 Ethnicity: The talent space is so rich out that your place of birth and tribe are usually given a backseat. Guess what, this could also be subjected to biases. However, there are clients that would ask that they want diversity cause present structure favours a certain tribe but why put yourself out of the equation.
📍 Curriculum Vitae as Header: Some would bolden and make it the largest font in their profile. Do take it out as this already announces what it is.
📍 Marital Status: In my experience except for such roles that involve a lot of traveling and certain roles requiring other pertinent stuff, this should be excluded as what a married person can do, a single-status-individual can do.
📍 Long Job Responsibilities: Keep it Simple, concise and clear. Please don’t go online and copy verbatim about 10-15 job responsibilities. You were a Sales Executive that was promoted through your 7 years on the job to Sales Manager and therefore you repeat the same functions in about 2 pages of your resume just to show progression.
Professional Summary/Career Objectives: There is a difference between these:
📍Career Objective -usually short, one or two sentences long. It is specific about the position and type of job. It identifies the kind of career you are seeking and the focus is “You”.
Summary shows your qualifications for the job. It gives the Recruiter a quick synopsis of your background, skills, strengths, and experience that is relevant to the advertised job.
📍Hobbies/ Passion: Do not write anything that comes to mind. Sometimes, i have seen candidates being bursted. 😀. “I can speak French” but you can’t make a full sentence. “I love reading books” but can’t mention any.
📍 Use of Colours & Graphics- There are roles that could be artistically or SM. You can use these to show your talents but for others, you can leave out. Also some companies deploy ATS that may not recognize these so don’t take yourself out of reckoning.
📍 Email Address: While your work email address is unacceptable to be used as a channel of communication, your personal email address should be devoid of innuendos, sexy and political undertones. You don't want to showcase something that could lead to a bias towards you. e.g “omosexyplus@gmail.com
📍Long Pages: Sometimes we think the longer the better so we have information overload and we put unnecessary details. For the more experienced candidates, please include your successes and accomplishments.
