Your resume has spots that no professional resume reader ever looks at: the objective, the summary, and big block paragraphs. It is just a fact, no one reads them.
You may have hidden critical stuff in your resume the way my son once hid himself. In a game my son hid from our family right by the front door. Right in the open. We have coat hooks there. He hid inside a coat hanging on a hook. His shoes and a foot of his pants were fully exposed. Our whole family looked for 15 minutes before someone found him. He hid in a spot no one ever looks at.
The objective and summary on everybody’s resume says the same thing. So I read the first 5 words just to be sure, then I skip them.
You say, “hard worker,” “team player,” and “want to grow.” So what? The day I read a resume that says, “I’m lazy, can’t work with others and want to stagnate,” I’ll show the whole office. I don’t have time to wade through a bunch of descriptions of things everyone does. So I skip the objective and the summary.
If I’m going to read your objective or summary it has to be short. One line is best. It has to start telling me about you in the first 5 words. What is unique about you must come out. Don’t talk about things I expect in every employee.
Ugly, huge, wordy paragraphs are also more than I can handle. Take the 6 most important points of your paragraph and turn each essential point into one line bullets. I’ll get those 6 points. If you bury the 6 most important things about you in a half page paragraph, I’ll never read them. If YOU don’t know what the 6 most important things are, YOU have been lazy. Don’t expect me to pick the most important points in your resume out for you. I don’t have time.
10 seconds is all that most resumes get before they are trashed. If they make it past the 10 second screening, they get a 45 second review. A final few will be fully read. Don’t hide the most important information. Make it stand out. Make sure I read it.
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Something To Do Today
Try to get your Objective and Summary sections down to less than one line. If you have a paragraph over 3 lines in length, consider cutting it out or turning it into bullets.
Remember: Your resume has only one job, to get you an interview. It is not a complete job history or a confessional. Its only purpose is to get you an interview.
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Tomorrow: Referrals vs. Monster
Later: Personality tests