u/bullishforsunscreen

Would an undo button ONCE be in the works? So often I accidentally delete my bridge or motorway and it costs me to wait for it 😭

for context, screening resumes is a big chunk of my job. some weeks I go through a few hundred. at this point I can tell within seconds if someone's getting a callback and it's almost never about the stuff people stress over

the biggest one: I get to the bottom of the page and still don't know what you do for a living. that's it. that's the whole problem with 70% of resumes. you spent your sunday choosing between two fonts and I can't tell if you're an accountant or a project manager

so here's my actual advice, in order of how much it matters

do the 10 second test. look at your resume for 10 seconds then look away. current job, years of experience, main tools. if YOU have to hunt around your own resume for that info, imagine me with 200 of them open in a folder

delete the objective statement. "seeking a challenging position where I can grow and contribute." my brother in christ nobody has read that sentence since 2009. that's prime real estate at the top of the page and you're wasting it on a sentence that appears on every resume ever written

those skill progress bars. you're 80% at excel. 80% of what?? who decided this?? just list the tools. please

your file name. last week I downloaded "resume_FINAL_final_v2 (3).pdf" and honestly it told me more about the candidate than the resume did. name it FirstName LastName Resume. done. easiest win of your life

stop stretching one page of experience into two. we can tell. the margins get suspicious, line spacing starts breathing, suddenly there's a "relevant coursework" section. if you have 15 to 20 years of real experience then sure use two pages. otherwise cut

results not responsibilities. "responsible for social media accounts" is the job description. "grew the newsletter 4k to 22k in a year" is YOU. even one number changes everything

and my controversial one: put 2 to 3 interests at the bottom. one line. I've had interviews completely open up because someone listed marathons or like, competitive birdwatching, and we spent the first five minutes just talking like humans. it won't get you the interview but it makes the interview not painful, which matters more than people think

anyway the pattern with all of this is that good resumes aren't impressive, they're just easy to read. most people need to delete half their resume not add to it

drop questions below if you want, I'll answer what I can between meetings

edit: If you want a starting point instead of building one from scratch, there's a template floating around this sub that holds up fine structurally: ats resume. And someone posted a full example yesterday that's worth a look for the writing as much as the layout: good resume example. Any plain single column layout works, those just save you the setup.