These 5 Résumé Mistakes Are Hurting Your Job Search

These 5 Rsum Mistakes Are Hurting Your Job SearchThese 5 Rsum Mistakes Are Hurting Your Job SearchAs a former hiring manager who now helps clients with their own hiring, I look at a lot ofrsums. Day after day, I see job candidates severely harming their own chances by submittingrsumsthat do a terrible job ofhighlightingtheir qualifications and making it easy for employers to spot why they might be the right person for the job. Frustratingly, fruchtwein people are making the same small number of easily fixable mistakes. I cant write back to these candidates to tell them to clean up theirrsumsif they want a better shot at a jobbut I can tell you These arethe five fruchtwein frequent mistakes I see and what you should be doing instead1. Writing arsumthat reads like a series of job descriptions.This is by far the most common mistake job applicants make. In the bullet points candidates use to describe what they did at each job, they only list activities, such as edit documents, collect d ata or manage website.As a result, these bullets read like a job descriptions.While this method describes your jobs, it doesnt convey what kind of employee you were, which is what employers care most about. After all, someone could engage in those activities and do a mediocre job, so yourrsumshould convey that you excelled. That means you should be talking about yourachievements what you accomplished, what the outcomes of your work were and what made you shine in the role. Its the difference between managed billing and completely revamped client billing system to ensure bills are now sent out on schedule or resolved an inherited four-month backlog of invoices in three weeks.2. Leading with your education, even though its been years since you graduated from college. Once you have some work experience, employers care most about what your work history has been and what youve accomplished. Your education is a distant second, so lead with your work history and save your education for the end. In fact, even if youre a new grad, if you have relevant work experience, you should lead with that. (Some fields are an exception to this, but if youre in one of them, you probably know it.) 3. Giving a long list of core competencies. Its fine to have a section that lists your skills, but too often people throw everything they can think of into this section, resulting in laughably long lists of skills that most hiring managers end up ignoring. If you choose to list skills on yourrsum, they should be hard skills that are truly distinguishing, like software programsnot subjective self-assessments, such as strong communication skillsor works well in groups and independently.Instead of listing your skills, demonstrate how youve used them, via the bullet points describing what youve done at each job. That way, you can frame it in terms of what you accomplished with the skill, instead of just noting the skill itself. Also, if you do decide to retain this section, please call it some thing other than core competencies, which is jargon that tends to makes hiring managers eyes glaze over. Calling the section skills is fine.4. Including so much info before your work experience that it doesnt start until the bottom of the page. Sometimes job seekers load theirrsums with so much extra information that their work history doesntstart until the bottom of the page or, worse, a second page. The thing that employers care most about when reviewing yourrsumis your work experience. You want it to be the first thing they see, so dont bury it deep intothe document.5. Mentioning every job youve ever had, no matter how long ago or irrelevant to what you do now. Arsumisnt supposed to be a comprehensive accounting of every job youve ever had. Rather, its a marketingdocument that you should edit to present yourself in the strongest possible light. That means that you may not need to include every job youve ever had or jobs from two decades ago. Focus on more recent work (the last 10 to 15 years) and the work that most closely relates to the job youre applying for.Alison Greenwrites the popularAsk a Manager blog, where she dispenses advice on career, job search and management issues. Shes the author of How to Get a Job Secrets of a Hiring Manager, co-author of Managing to Change the World The Nonprofit Managers Guide to Getting Results and the former chief of staff of a successful nonprofit organization, where she oversaw day-to-day staff management.