Five resume red flags to avoid

According to a recruitment study, your resume has mere seconds in front of a senior associate, hiring manager or recruiter before they make a decision about your application.

HR staff are trained to look for disqualifying factors. With just seconds to impress, here are five glaring red flags that vex recruiters and see them weed out candidates at a glance.

Messy formatting

Little to no white space on the page, decorative or small type and the complete absence of page margins signal to HR that you may not be their ideal candidate. Beyond your apparent lack of organisation and overgenerous data selection, this may suggest that you don’t have a clear vision or, worse, that you’re imprudent.

Your resume needs to be reader-friendly, but it also needs to be deliberate. This isn’t the time to get experimental with font types or test your Microsoft Office artistry – and your resume certainly shouldn’t act as your memoir. Professionally prepared resumes are considered and highlight only the most esteemed aspects in a career history.

Steer clear of graphics, too many colours and too much information to create a resume that will speak clearly to your prospective employer.

Gaps in your employment history

While HR may anticipate that most resumes will show at least one substantial gap (i.e. over six months) in their employment history, unexplained periods of career inactivity are cause for concern. This is one of the times where things should not be left unsaid. It’s perfectly acceptable to include a short sentence that will explain any gaps of multiple years, such as “Left position to further my education by undertaking a course” or “Left position to travel for a set amount of time”.

In the same vein, too many short-term jobs to a scrutinising eye can suggest you lack the commitment or stamina to persevere in a position. In this instance, it’s worth explaining that your career movements instead reflect a desire for continued professional development.

Using time-worn phrases

It seems tired and clichéd that this particular red flag will always make the ‘do not’ list, however it’s still something job recruiters find in resumes. Such terms include “hard worker”, “forward-thinking”, “dedicated”, “detail orientated” and “driven”.

Hiding behind time-worn phrases can appear evasive and will encourage HR to question your talents, work ethic and your own viewpoint on what you can offer the company. Get creative with your resume and use language to frame your strengths.

Lacking results

One step towards making your resume easier to read for time-poor hiring managers is to convert your data from qualitative to quantitative. Numbers, metrics and percentages can often be more impactful than words. Without such data, your resume can appear haphazard or altogether too vague. Would you hire a candidate without seeing hard facts on their successes?

Unprofessional details

A resume is a package deal. While the content is critical, so too are the finer details such as the file name, your email address or your Skype handle. With hundreds of applications for any one job, make sure you include your name on the file to ensure you don’t get lost in the masses. Emails are free, so don’t let your sentimental attachment to an older email address hold you back in your career. Lead with your best professional foot forward.

For a fruitful career in tax, mastering the art of writing a professional resume is the first step to success.

CV writing advice: Using language to frame your strengths

You have a wealth of new knowledge alongside a catalogue of desirable attributes – everything you need to earn the job of your dreams. Transcribing these assets to paper, however, can be daunting.

Language sets the framework for how you present yourself to a potential new employer. Here are a few dos and don’ts to make sure this important document promotes your best attributes.

DO

 

Use the active voice: This is passive: The project was completed successfully. This is active: I completed the project successfully. The latter not only emphasises you as the agent in the role, it articulates your contribution.

 

Be specific: Short examples of your achievements are more informative than throwaway lines. Something like I am a fast learner can be improved by saying I started the role not knowing how to use the system but became an intermediate-level user within a week.

 

Highlight initiative: Even if your previous roles or experience haven’t been illuminating, you can frame it in a better light. Don’t describe the role that was given to you. Instead, narrate what you actually did. It’s the difference between answered phones and drafted emails for my manager and dealt with 30 to 40 customer enquiries a day and provided executive-level written correspondence.

 

Be positive: If you have a blight on your CV – for example a poor performance in a role – you can turn this around with the emphasis on the lessons you learnt rather than the negativity of the incident. Avoid words like struggled and use overcame, focusing on the outcome rather than the issue.

 

Be confident: Be upfront about owning your skills, knowledge and achievements, and use testimonials and other evidence to support this. Instead of writing managers have told me I'm good at writing reports, try I have strong written communication skills and managers often highlight the high standard of my reports.

 

DON’T

 

Use buzzwords you can’t support: It’s good to be positive, but don’t burden your writing with clichés or jargon that you don’t understand or can’t support with examples. Instead of using team player, for example, explain what you brought to the team.

 

Overuse lists: Bullet points are handy and they make a CV scan well, but overuse makes it look like you’ve handed them a list. Keep it to no more than five points per subheading and always add a concise explanatory note of no more than one line to clarify points if required.

 

Forget to conduct a spelling and grammar check: Small things like poor punctuation could put you out of the running if you’re coming up against a candidate of equal strength. One tip is to read the whole document aloud, or ask a friend to check it once you’re ready to send it.

 

Remember that a CV is a document that sells your skills and knowledge to a potential employer. By using the right language, they will understand what you can do and then use that information to decide if you should progress to the next stage.

 

 

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