The Laundry List

At the top of a resume I received recently was a laundry list of “Areas of Expertise”:

Areas of Expertise
Operations / Manufacturing
P&L Responsibility
Business Plans / Operating Budgets
Business Development
Bid Estimates / Contract Negotiation
Continuous Improvement
Six Sigma Methodologies
Consolidation / Organization Development
Supply Chain / Purchasing
Market Research
Product Development
Outsourcing / Reverse Sourcing

This is something I see a lot. Job seekers listing keywords that they think will get attention. The problem is that it doesn’t set you apart. There is nothing here that says that the job seeker is good at at any of these.

Now, I’m a proponent of having a skills section that is a laundry list of keywords – so why is this bad?

The target audience for the skills section is a computer – specifically the database system your resume may have to get through with a lot of large companies. These databases look for keywords, so you better have them.

The problem with this resume is that they keyword list was at the top. The top of the first page of your resume is the most valuable real estate – far too important to waste on a keyword list.