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Old 12-09-2013, 07:46 PM
 
1,480 posts, read 2,785,164 times
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But most people refuse to have a professional write it.
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Old 12-09-2013, 07:49 PM
 
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
453 posts, read 629,482 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by I'm Retired Now View Post
But most people refuse to have a professional write it.
Most people don't need to have a professional write it.

That said, hell, *I* will offer to write, edit or proofread a resume for anyone who asks me. (I've worked as a freelance copy editor and proofreader for years, as a sideline.)
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Old 12-09-2013, 07:53 PM
 
Location: Buckeye, AZ
38,936 posts, read 23,727,636 times
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The problem I find is you ask two people for their opinion, they give opposite opinions. What do you do in that case.
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Old 12-09-2013, 08:06 PM
 
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
453 posts, read 629,482 times
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Ask a third?
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Old 12-09-2013, 08:36 PM
 
9,863 posts, read 13,987,540 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CountryCarr View Post
I don't feel resumes serve any purpose at all except to help " the idiots declare themselves ".
I am a hiring manager, and if you are applying for one of my jobs, your resume does matter. I've seen resumes with great credentials that I've immediately thrown in the trash due to spelling or grammar errors.

Quote:
Originally Posted by mkpunk View Post
The problem I find is you ask two people for their opinion, they give opposite opinions. What do you do in that case.
Make sure you are asking the right people. You want people who recently have been hired to higher level professional positions, ideally in your field. Asking someone who has been in the same position for 30 years is not going to help you very much, no matter how "smart" they are (although, they should be able to correct spelling and grammar.)
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Old 12-10-2013, 02:05 AM
 
4,701 posts, read 4,040,951 times
Reputation: 2483
Quote:
Originally Posted by the_grimace View Post
5. Including personal information
- no, just no. This is stuff like including a picture of yourself, or your hobbies, or other tidbits of information like church goer and father of four, or single mom who knows how to dance, or avid basketball and football player. STOP, why the hell do you think your hobbies are going to qualify you for the job. Sadly, lots of people do this.

And what happens in the end? These people get jobs because their resumes are being shared on a private "hidden market" email list and at the end of the day it's more about word of mouth references than who can put together a proper resume.

Anyone else have any stories about terrible resumes they have seen? I still can't believe the 8 page one...
While I agree with you those are bad examples, I don't agree with your last point. A lot of employers want you to include personal information. It is to show that you are a person with interest, and not just a robot.

Although, I don't live in America. Maybe it is different there.
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Old 12-10-2013, 02:11 AM
 
278 posts, read 306,790 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Camlon View Post
While I agree with you those are bad examples, I don't agree with your last point. A lot of employers want you to include personal information. It is to show that you are a person with interest, and not just a robot.

Although, I don't live in America. Maybe it is different there.
Cracking up. Ok well. . Typically in the US of A we dont put personal info on resumes. There are exceptions but its generally considered bad form.
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Old 12-10-2013, 02:20 AM
 
4,701 posts, read 4,040,951 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HeyHowdy View Post
Cracking up. Ok well. . Typically in the US of A we dont put personal info on resumes. There are exceptions but its generally considered bad form.
Why are you cracking up?

If that is the case it is probably due to lawsuits. Employers want to know a little bit about the person they are hiring. They want to know they have been active in something else apart from work. A person without interest is likely to be a boring employee as well.

Why do I want to know that, because social compatibility is important to create a good work culture.
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Old 12-10-2013, 06:17 AM
 
4,586 posts, read 5,577,929 times
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IF The pay is low, you won't be getting nicely written resumes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by the_grimace View Post
Disclaimer: I am not a recruiter, HR rep, or Hiring Manager.

I am part of an email list that occasional posts jobs and shares resumes for people looking for work in my industry. I am a mid level design professional, and am not any type of hiring manager, but I get to see many other people's resumes through this email list. I also have seen many others' resumes through work when we were making additions to the team, as well as various acquaintances' resumes from various channels. There is one common theme.

They are all terrible...

I feel that as if everything that I've learned about proper resume writing has been wiped off the map and apparently doesn't matter anymore. Things like proper grammar, succinct information, proper formatting, neatness, etc. etc., no one seems to care about it anymore. As someone that takes great care in putting together a very nice resume for each position, I'm beginning to feel my time is wasted as my success rate is not astonishing, but the effort I put into the resumes is very high. It's upsetting to see such horrible resumes being accepted by companies. Let me share some examples of the common resume gaffs I typically see that A LOT OF PEOPLE do.

1. Long resumes
- Just a couple weeks ago, there was a resume of a guy who had an 8 page resume. 8 PAGES..... He pretty much described every position with 2-3 paragraphs of description (written style, not bullet points), and the formatting was awful. His resume was a mess of different font types, styles, and sizes. This guy was only a senior level designer as well, but even if he had 20 years of experience you don't need more than 3 pages max. I couldn't believe it, how this guy would ever get hired, but yet this guy had a respectable work history.

2. Grammatical errors
- ughhh, come on people, spell check and proofread. Yes, I see many resumes with typos, and it seems to be more and more acceptable. One resume I saw a couple months ago probably had around 20 typos... was this guy drunk when making his resume? Another guy spelled his name wrong (it was in two different places on the resume spelled differently), yet another guy spelled the state he lived in wrong. Minor punctuation errors might be ok to overlook (depending on if you're an english nazi or not), but you wouldn't believe just how many people have resumes with lots of words spelled terribly wrong. Very sad.

3. Absolutely crap formatting
- the person's name and address is randomly floating somewhere at the top, a phone number is placed off center in a corner, paragraphs aren't aligned and text is all over the place. So many resumes have no sense of space or format, rather just snippets of text randomly placed over the pages. You would think that designers and artists (whom most of the resumes I view are from) would take care with this kind of stuff.

4. Inconsistent styling
- a minor point, but still one that lends to the overall look of your resume. I see so many resumes that will use inconsistent text style options. Like using one font in one area, and another font in the next, then back to the first font. Or bolding a certain part of your resume, like a job title, but not bolding it for the next job entry. Or using different size fonts.... sadly I see different sized fonts, I'm talking about one paragraph being like size 10 font, and the next size 11, not just something like a job title or header being bigger font.

5. Including personal information
- no, just no. This is stuff like including a picture of yourself, or your hobbies, or other tidbits of information like church goer and father of four, or single mom who knows how to dance, or avid basketball and football player. STOP, why the hell do you think your hobbies are going to qualify you for the job. Sadly, lots of people do this.

And what happens in the end? These people get jobs because their resumes are being shared on a private "hidden market" email list and at the end of the day it's more about word of mouth references than who can put together a proper resume.

Anyone else have any stories about terrible resumes they have seen? I still can't believe the 8 page one...
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Old 12-10-2013, 06:18 AM
 
1,480 posts, read 2,785,164 times
Reputation: 1611
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kineticity View Post
Most people don't need to have a professional write it.

That said, hell, *I* will offer to write, edit or proofread a resume for anyone who asks me. (I've worked as a freelance copy editor and proofreader for years, as a sideline.)
There are many great writers who develop a terrible resume because they don't use the basic rules of resume writing or don't describe their skills and accomplishments very well in relation to the target job.
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