Tuesday, April 2, 2013

8 Red Flags Employers See on Your Resume

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Hiring managers spend only seconds skimming your resume before making a quick decision about whether to reject you or consider you further, so it's essential that your resume doesn't contain the red flags that will turn them off during that short initial scan. Here are eight red flags that will often put you straight into the "no" pile without further consideration.


1. A history of job-hopping. If you have a history of moving quickly from one job to the next without staying very long, employers will wonder whether you get bored easily or can't keep a job. If you do have good reasons for the job changes (such as having a spouse in the military), make sure to fill in employers upfront so they don't draw wrong conclusions.

2. Grammatical or spelling mistakes. Mistakes can get your resume immediately tossed, because they convey to an employer that you don't pay attention to detail. Employers assume that you've polished your resume more than you will most documents, so if you have mistakes in it, they assume your work will have even more errors.

3. Bad writing. Even for jobs that don't require flawless writing, employers still want to see evidence that you can communicate well. If you don't write clearly and concisely, they'll worry about how you'll communicate once on the job—and many will take your resume-writing quality as a shortcut to drawing conclusions about your intelligence.

4. Overly aggrandized self-descriptions. Hiring managers generally frown on language like "visionary thinker," "creative innovator" or "respected leader" because these are the sorts of things that others can say about you, but you can't say credibly about yourself. Putting them on your resume signals that you're either naive, arrogant or both. Stick to objective experience and accomplishments only.

Red Flags 5 - 8 and The Complete USNews Article

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