I love to read. I am a voracious consumer of fiction, nonfiction, newspapers, magazines, blogs, articles, cookbooks, the backs of cereal boxes … you get the picture.
So when I get bored reading a resume, I can only imagine what it’s like for people who don’t love to read!
What makes for a boring resume?
- Too much detail about the scope, duties, and responsibilities of your jobs.
- Too much generic material – content that could be written about many people – rather than stories that are unique to you.
- Too much of any kind of information (see my earlier post, “Get To The Point!“) – nowadays people have short attention spans!
- Too many adjectives, qualifiers, and other language that obscures meaning.
- Sentences that are long and convoluted. (Did I mention short attention spans?)
- Lack of results, so we can’t tell what you actually did.
Why do people write boring resumes? I know it’s not intentional. I think they are working so hard to include everything that might possibly be of value that they lose sight of the larger picture: the need to captivate, inform, and connect with the reader.
If you pique your readers’ interest, you increase your chances of getting to the next step (an interview or other direct communication). But if you put them to sleep, you’ll never get the chance to show them how fascinating, qualified, and valuable you truly are.