What you omit from your resume can be just as important as what you include. Here are seven things to leave off:
- Your photo. Seriously. Stop. It doesn't matter how someone looks, it is about their experience and their education.
- Subjective descriptions. Your resume is for experience and accomplishments only. It's not the place for subjective traits, like "great leadership skills" or "creative innovator." I ignore anything subjective that an applicant writes about herself, because so many people's self-assessments are wildly inaccurate and I don't yet know enough about the candidate to have any idea if hers is reliable or not.
- The objective statement you clearly wrote for a different company. In fact, leave an objective off altogether.
- A third page. If you're in your twenties, your resume should only be one page--there's not enough experience to justify a second one. If you're older, two pages are fine, but you go over that limit at your own peril. Keep in mind that: hiring managers may be spending only 20 or 30 seconds on your application initially, so extra pages are either ignored or they dilute the impact of the others.
- Two versions of your resume. You have to pick just one.
- Your abilities to type and to use Word. It's assumed you can do both of these things. It is 2012 everyone should have the ability to type and use Word.
- Extra documentation. Unless the company has specifically asked for something other than a cover letter and resume, don't send it. Sometimes candidates include unsolicited writing samples, letters of recommendation, transcripts, and so forth. In most cases, sending these extras without being asked won't help you, and in some cases it can actually hurt. For instance, when a candidate attaches an unsolicited 20-page writing sample, it looks naive and makes me think she doesn't understand the hiring process.
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