Resume Tip: Limit the use of gobbledygook words that are overused and lack specific meaning.
Resume Tip: Limit the use of gobbledygook words that are overused and lack specific meaning.
Some words are so overused they lose their meaning. These words are called Gobbledygook. Stay away from these words.
Writing an effective resume requires a greater attention to detail than almost any other writing you will do. Most hiring managers assume the resume you submit is an example of the highest quality work you can produce. A mistake that would be overlooked in a typical daily email becomes a major detractor on your resume. This makes proofreading your resume a critical step.
Writing an effective resume requires a greater attention to detail than almost any other writing you will do. Most hiring managers assume the resume you submit is an example of the highest quality work you can produce. A mistake that would be overlooked in a typical daily email becomes a major detractor on your resume. This makes proofreading your resume a critical step.
Eliminating spelling and grammar mistakes sounds easy, but can be very difficult. Most people find proofreading their own work extremely challenging. They know what they meant to write. A missing word, use of the wrong word or a misspelling can be overlooked with even repeated proofreads.
Spell Check
There are steps you can take to avoid making mistakes. The first is using spell check. When I get a resume and open it in Word, any misspelled word is underlined in red. The mistakes are essentially highlighted and jump off the screen. Errors like this will make the worst impression. It is so easy to identify and fix an error that is underlined in red on your screen that few hiring managers will be forgiving.
You may not have Microsoft Word. If you don’t, other word processors have spell check. OpenOffice is a free office suite anyone can download. It is very similar to Microsoft Office and can save files in a Word format. If you don’t have a good work processor get OpenOffice or Microsoft Word.
If you are submitting your resume online, you may have to copy it into a form. Few forms come with spell check. There is a solution. Install the google toolbar and add the spell check button. This will spell check any form fields in your browser.
Limitations of Spell Check
Even if you use spell check, it is still easy to make a mistake. There are four common mistakes:
Typos Resulting in the Wrong Word: If you type the wrong key and spell a different word correctly, spell check will not catch the mistake. For example, typing “k” instead of “d” in “word” will result in “work.”
All Caps: Some programs do not spell check words in all caps, since a word in all caps is often an acronym. On a resume, many job seekers use all caps to emphasize important elements.
Common Mistakes: There are some words that are commonly misused. For example, “affect” and “effect” are very similar, but have different usage.
Omitted Words: When typing quickly, you may skip a word. For example, pronouns, articles and prepositions are short and can be missed when editing a sentence. When proofreading, it is easy to not look at these words and assume they are there. For a reader unfamiliar with the text, omitting one of these words is a mistake that is easy to see.
Solutions
Read Out Loud: A good way to proofread your resume is to print it and read it out load. Go slow and read each word individually. This is tough. You have to concentrate on each word.
Read Backwards: To make it easier to concentrate on each word, read your resume from the bottom up. Read the last sent first. Then move up to the second to last sentence. Keep reading each sentence individually, from the end to the beginning. Reading each sentence by itself, you are more likely to concentrate on each word and not get into a flow that will cause you to overlook mistakes.
Change Your Surroundings: If you always work on your resume in one location, go somewhere else to proofread. The change of scenery can make it easier to focus on text as it is written on the page.
Get a Proofreader: Get someone to proofread your resume. Ideally, you will know a good writer that is an expert with resumes review your resume. If you don’t know some like this, you can hire someone to do a resume review.
To ensure your resume is error free takes work and multiple reviews. Some job seekers don’t have the patience for this or don’t realize the importance.
The basic purpose of a resume is get you an interview. This is a simple goal, but one many job seekers struggle to reach. The problem stems from how a resume is assessed. A resume is usually assessed in two very different ways, but few job seekers design their resume to make the best impression during both of these assessment.
The first assessment your resume needs to pass is the initial screen. During this screen, the goal of the hiring manager is eliminate as many resumes as possible in a very short time. A hiring manager might receive a hundred or more resumes for a position. The goal at this stage is to reduce this stack of resumes down to a manageable number, perhaps the top 10 or 20.
In this review, the hiring manager will often have a few criteria that are critical to the position. These critical elements could be educational, work experience or skill requirements. Usually, two or three criteria are sufficient to reduce the resumes down to the top 20.
As a hiring manager does this initial screen, they may only give a resume a 15 to 30 second look. That’s all that is needed to look for two or three main elements. For example, if a hiring manager requires an MBA for a position, it only takes a few seconds to see if the resume lists an MBA.
The common pitfall many job seekers fall into is not making their qualifications with critical elements of the job very prominent on their resume. The education of a job seeker is usually easy to find, since it is in a section of its own. Work experience and skills are not always as clearly identifiable. For this reason, it is extremely important to look at the requirements for a position and make sure you show how you meet these requirements.
If you have the experience that a company wants, it should be clear and easy to find. With hiring managers only spending 15 to 30 seconds on your resume initially, they can only do a quick scan. They will not read every word. Important details of your background need to be prominent. If they are buried in large blocks of text, there is little chance they will be read.
The second assessment is a detailed look at your resume where the hiring manager attempts to learn as much about you as they can. All of the resumes in this group meet the minimum basic requirements for the job. The goal now is to identify the best of the group.
In this detailed assessment, demonstrating qualifications isn’t sufficient. All of the candidates at this stage will satisfy the basics and many will have a background very close to the target of the hiring manager. The candidates that rise to the top and get interviews demonstrate a pattern of success. The key is showing how the job seeker contributed significant value to their employers.
Most job seekers focus on experience. This focus leads to an emphasis on the responsibilities they held. Because their competition for a position held the same responsibilities, this does not differentiate them. Usually, it only gets them past the first screen – the 15 second look. When they are looked at in the second assessment, they get passed over. There will be candidates that emphasize the value they have provided in their careers. By doing these, these individuals rise to the top of the pile and get invited to interview.
When you write your resume, you need to work to make your resume standout in both assessments. Ensure that your resume demonstrates your basic capabilities very clearly and includes detailed examples of your contributions to your employers. If you do both of these things, you will have more success than most of your competition.