By Ramsey Penegar, Executive Career Strategist and Resume Consultant
In honor of some of the mistakes and poor choices I have seen on resumes recently, here is a short list of things
NOT to do in your resume. Enjoy and put this to use!
- Do not use a cute vanity email address. DancingDiva45@aol.com is NOT a professional email address! Use your name, if you are Joe Smith use JSmith@yahoo.com or JoeS@gmail.com or joseph.a.smith@hotmail.com. Avoid using numbers if you can too. If you need to include numbers for a unique email address use your zip code, area code, or street address numbers - don't use your age, your date of birth, or your graduation year.
- Do not include high school graduation information on your
adult resume. If you are still a teenager and not enrolled in college yet, by all means include high school information. However, if you are an adult with a college degree, there is no need to list your high school information. If you don't have a college degree yet you have 10 or more years of professional experience to include on your resume, there is absolutely no need to include your high school diploma on your resume.
- Don't age yourself by including dates of graduation if you graduated more than 5 years ago. For more information on age/wage discrimination and how to improve your chances of landing an interview, check out my article on the age subject by clicking HERE.
- Do not list more than 10 to 12 years of professional experience. Listing more than is
required for the job at hand will put an “age” on you, which can open you up to
age discrimination and being labeled as overqualified. Both of which can eliminate you from the
candidate pool rather quickly. If you are submitting your resume for C-level executive positions, I recommend listing about 15 years of professional history. To read my short article with more information on this, please click HERE.
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Do not include a photo of yourself. Unless you are a news
anchor, model, or actor - what you look like should never be relevant to your job skills and abilities. See my article with a more in depth discussion on this by clicking HERE.
There will be more to come, so stay tuned!
There will be more to come, so stay tuned!
