What HR is Not Looking for in a Resume

You have just seven seconds to get the attention of a Recruiter or other HR professional who is about to decide whether or not they bring you in for an interview.

"If I had even just a nickel for every resume I saw like this, I wouldn't need to have this job," I told my Recruiter. I worked for a global Fortune 500 company for awhile working as a Recruiting Assistant in a call center. We hired a lot of people all the time and part of my job was to scour the internet for resumes. After seeing the sheer number of individuals with "cookie cutter" resumes, as I loved to call them, I realized some education institutions were telling their students to craft their resume this way. (My own university's career department was just as guilty and didn't like working with me anymore after I insisted this is not what employers are looking for).

Some important things to remember and despite incredible amounts of information out there saying not to do these things people still do them. Do not:

Put your age, sex, any religious affiliations you belong to or how many kids you have. Employers aren't allowed to discriminate against you, but the person who reviews your resume is human and comes with subconscious prejudices. Putting any of these things on your resume will subconsciously trigger an instant "Let's see how many other applicants we have..." whether the reviewer is aware of it or not -- especially if there are hundreds to choose from. Don't even give it a chance to develop.

List your job duties. In the recruiting world, we are familiar with most positions out there and it's automatically known that you know how to type, can answer a phone, use a fax, and speak with respect to customers. Including it, is a waste of space.

Make your resume more than one page long. For the love of everything that is good and true, please (begging) don't do this. Recruiters and HR professionals have so much to do to get their regular jobs done while their bosses are asking them to do more and the last thing they have time to do is to wade through more than a one page resume.

Don't list a general objective. Recruiting knows them by heart. Make it specific. Bad Example: To get a job working in the administrative field. Good Example: To help facilitate cost savings & increasing productivity for your company working in Administration & growing professionally.

Add References. There is enough identity theft going around. Employers find that if you respect your references' information by not plastering it all over a resume, that there's a good chance you'll be just as careful with their company and client information.

Taking this information out alone should cut down the wasted space found in most resumes. Removing these will automatically improve your chances of being taken seriously by a Recruiter or HR Professional.