8 Resume Terms You Should Retire

by Brandon Lawson

If you want to land a job, you may want to think about rewriting your resume. Chances are you have cliché phrases, buzzwords, or annoying jargon that drive the Human Resources folks nuts. To help you appease the HR gods, we will give you a quick list of some of the most common resume words they want retired:

1.“Salary Negotiable”: Don’t you think it would be odd if your salary were NOT negotiable? You may want to think twice before wasting space on your resume to state the obvious. An HR professional may think you are just adding this to pad space on your resume.


2.“Career Objective”: Back in the day, it was popular to have the top section of your resume stamped with an objective, like “To obtain a position as a [insert job title here] that leverages my skills and experience as well as promoting growth.” HR professionals have seen this one too many times, and it drives them crazy. You should replace your “Career Objective” with a “Mission Statement” that summarizes your background, core competencies and accomplishments to show what you have to offer to employers.


3.“Team Player”: When you consider that there are few jobs where you don’t work with others, “team player” becomes an overrated term. Regardless of how talented you are, most companies will not hire someone that does not work well with others, so consider team player as a given.


4.“Experienced”:  This is a vague term especially if you’re not putting a specific length of time behind it. Saying “Created Excel spreadsheets for marketing strategy meetings” is a lot more specific than “experienced at creating Excel spreadsheets.”

Terms 5-8 and the complete article