Eight Reasons Why Your Resume is Getting Dumped!

In today’s economic climate, the competition is difficult, but your resume should never be.

The resume is the most effective tool to kick-start your job search. Applying for a new job, the best way to get your foot in the door is your resume. It is not difficult to write a powerful resume, but it does take a little attention.

Some facts about resumes, and the way it can affect your career:

More than half of job seekers fail because of grammar errors, spelling mistakes or poorly written resumes.
A CV that makes it to the next step is received within 200 seconds of the job posting.
The average time spent looking at a resume is five to seven seconds.
Unprofessional email addresses will be ignored by more than three-quarters of recruiters.
Nearly 500,000 resumes are posted on job boards (like Monster) every week.

Consider you are the boss; you just received a number of CV’s—even up to 250 resumes—for a specific job opening. This is the first real communication from a job seeker.

If that first impression were not enough, would you waste your time with the candidate? No!

You will probably drop that CV in the circular file (or recycle bin), and move on to the next one.

This means your resume has to be appealing. An impressive, accurate and well-written resume will not be not get dumped, but you just might have a better chance to make it to the interview.

Eight of the most common reasons your resume was dumped:

Using an unprofessional email address

A free Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail account is the best place to get professional emails if you do not have one already.

Mentioning low grades or poor test scores

If it is not something to be proud of, do not put it down.

Unusual, or irrelevant, information on your resume

Every detail on your resume should be relevant to the job, have a purpose or not be there.

Sending resumes as email attachments

Unless specified, submit the resume on the body of an email, not an attachment. Otherwise, it could be marked as spam. The recipient always could ask for another Word document or PDF file later.

Friends as references

Have professional references in a separate document.

Using non-traditional fonts or symbols

Not every computer can view all fonts, so it is best to stick with the standard Windows or True Fonts. If your resume opens as a page full of nonsense, or does not open at all, then all your time was wasted.

Using terminology that was only useful in the prior job

Make your CV as easy and jargon-fee as possible. Never assume the reader knows what specialty reports or non-standard projects you worked on.

Lying

Even though it is a simply horrible idea, it may (or may not) be surprising how many people still lie on resumes. More companies are doing their homework by verifying candidates’ claims. Sometimes a single phone call to a former employer can detect a lie. To keep from wasting a lot of your effort, simply do not do lie on a resume.