Resume Pet Peeves Straight From the Hiring Managers Mouth

Resume Pet Peeves Straight From the Hiring Managers Mouth Katharine Hansen of  Quintessential Careers,  recently surveyed dozens of hiring managers for her new book,  Top Notch Resumes for Executives,  to uncover their biggest pet peeves when it comes to candidate resumes. Here are a few of my favorites.  Get rid of the fluff. I talk about this frequently with my clients. Some seem very attached to words like team player, detail oriented, and good communicator. Believe me, these are not good choices for professional and executive level resumes. It is assumed that you have these competencies and besides that, these words are meaningless unless you have solid, metrics-focused accomplishments documented in your resume. Its time to move away from the junior-speak and move towards documents that showcase measurable success.Explain the story behind your accomplishments. Increased widget sales by 50% does not have meaning for a hiring authority unless you explain the context and the timeframe of the accomplishment. Increased widget sales by 50% in just 6 months by implementing a national marketing campaign that included a branded monthly product newsletter, multiple radio and television spots, and a money back guarantee program helps the reader better understand your unique value proposition.Ditch the functional resume. Hiring managers dont like them. It makes it too hard for them to figure out what you accomplished when. Its better to preserve the chronology, but add strategic functional categories under each job listing to prove competency and skill transferability.Be transparent. Hiring managers want to see your entire chronology, even if its listed in a section called Early Career and simply states company names and position titles. I counsel my clients to keep their employment experience intact and I encourage them to put their graduation date on their resume as well. Without these dates, you create the elephant in the middle of the living room syndrome and actually call more attention to the very thing you were trying to hide.