Resume Mistakes: Are you Guilty of These? PART II

Your resumes are like your precursors, they are usually something that introduces you before you have had the chance to do so in person. So when you are in the process or determining how to write a resume, here are some more pointers as regards the mistakes that you should avoid making: Making it Too Long: This is the age of twitter, of 140 characters to say all that you want in order to best convey your idea, it is an age of fast food and short attention spans and the last thing you want to do is have a person lose interest in your resume before you have had the chance to convey material information, details of import. So in a resume, it is vital to keep it short and to the point. Rule of thumb, don’t let it extend beyond a page. The reader should know, just after a glance at the resume, what you are all about, that is all the time you have to impress, amaze and generally make a telling impact! Making Reference Mistakes: Certainly a prospective employer wants to hear about you from former employers; but you are just stating the obvious when you say “references on request”. Present them when asked for but don’t give references from friends. It is best to keep references organized and accessible, all in one place, so that they are easy to present when required. Doing Cutesy Stuff: When you list an email address in your resume or send your resume examples through an email address, make sure it is a professional sounding email address. It may be really amusing to your friends to receive an email from a cute sounding address like bigbadluvver @ hotmail.com or toobadyourthere @ yahoo.com or cupidbaby @ whatever.com., it is a terrible idea for you to use such an email address for official purposes. Your probable employer may probably junk that mail before even looking at it! Sending it as an Attachment: Make it easy for your prospective employer to look at the salient points of your resume sample. Once you have figured out how to write your resume you also need to pay attention to how to send it. If you are emailing it, simply paste the text into the actual message box rather than attaching it along with the message, which the person will then have to download and which may not even open if there are incompatible operating systems or a malfunctioning virus checker. If in the process it loses some of the fancy formatting, it doesn’t matter anyway! Make Inaccurate or Exaggerated Statements: Don’t overstate your abilities or qualifications or exaggerate your experience, you are liable to be caught if someone decides to cross check, and if you are hired on the basis of the inaccuracies, you are likely to be overwhelmed by a job you cannot do. In the end just remember lying doesn’t pay. So remember not to make these common mistakes when you are working on how to write a resume and you should be fine!