Dont make these frightful resume mistakes - Sterling Career Concepts

Dont make these frightful resume mistakes Dont make these frightful resume mistakes As a member of the  Career Collective  blogging community of resume writers and career coaches, this Halloween-themed post is one of many today discussing how to avoid scary career/resume mistakes -or- how to ensure your resume/career costume fits you and attracts your target audience. I encourage you to visit other members responses linked at the end of my post and follow our hashtag on Twitter: #careercollective. How can you keep your resume from falling in the toss pile?   Are there ways  you make your resume easier to read and follow along?   Are there things you can avoid so you dont look like every other resume out there?    Yes!   And Im glad you asked.  WIth Halloween a few days away, lets talk about avoiding some frightful resume mistakes. The walls are closing in on you!   Not enough  white space. Its more common that you think.  You update your resume and the content falls onto a second (or third) page so you adjust and adjust and adjust the margins until it fits.  Not the best solution!     I never recommend margins smaller than 0.6 or 0.7 inches all around. If you dont maintain a healthy amount of white space, the page loses readability and becomes visually overloaded.  Too little content isnt good, but too much one page isnt good either.  It is okay to move onto another page you have my permission, with the caveat that you have enough content to fill  at least a quarter of the page. If not, consider removing some content or changing the font or reducing the size of the font slightly Death by Bullets.   Bullet points are like salt or any other seasoning when youre cooking.   You can have too little or too much and it will ruin the dish (errr.. document).   A job description that has a list of 8, 9, 10 or more bullets is just not that  effective.  Theres no rule that says you need to lead off every statement in a job description with a bullet.  In  fact, the opposite is true.   I  reserve my bullets for accomplishments and achievements that I want  to highlight. I dont use bullets lightly.    Try it.   Lightening up on your bullet use is a good thing.   They will really begin to pop off the page when you limit them.  And just as you should limit the number of bullets, you should also limit the length of your bulleted statements.   My personal rule is 3 lines max, 4 lines only if absolutely necessary. Theyre not paragraphs they are bullet points! Scaaaarrry font selections.  Too small, too hard to read, or too many. For optimum readability, font size should be between 10 and 12 and you should stick with commonly used fonts so as to avoid a situation where a font is not installed on the hiring managers computer.   If that happens, you lose all control over how your resume will look on the receiving end.   Talk about scary!     The other thing to keep in mind is consistency and less is more.   A resume should have no more than two font styles in it.   On the majority of my projects, I stick with one and alter it with bold, italics, and small caps.   If you want to use two, use one consistently for section titles and then a second one for the content of the document, and then stop. Walk away from the keyboard.   Resist the urge to incorporate a third font.   Template Horror. You are an individual with unique strengths, talents, and abilities.  You want to stand out in the job search process. You need to in todays competitive marketplace.   So then why are you still using a Microsoft Word resume template that you first created five years ago?   If anything shouts cookie cutter, its opening up a resume and seeing a Microsoft Word template.   I realize not everyone is adept at adding lines,  shading and other accents to Word documents, but please start with a clean Microsoft Word document and do what you can.  It doesnt need to be over the top. It just needs to be original. And if formatting  Word documents makes you cringe, a professional resume writer can assist you.   Some writers offer services that focus on formatting if youd prefer to maintain control over content creation. So there you have it.   Four ways to avoid the horrors that can be find lurking on your resume. The following  are posts addressing the same topic from  my colleagues in the Career Collective: Where Are the Wild Things, Anyway?, @WorkWithIllness Is Your Job Search Making You Feel Like a Smashed Pumpkin?, @DebraWheatman Hiding in Plain Sight, @WalterAkana, Dont make these frightful resume mistakes, @LaurieBerenson How Not to Be a Spooky Job Seeker, @heathermundell A Tombstone Resume:Eulogizing Your Experience, @GayleHoward The Top Ten Scary Things Job Seekers Do, @barbarasafani Oh, Job Search Isnt Like Trick or Treating?, @careersherpa A Most Unfortunate Resume Mistake No One Will Tell You, @chandlee Oh no. Not the phone!, @DawnBugni Halloween Caution: Job Seeker Horror, @resumeservice Boo! Are you scaring away opportunities or the competition? @MartinBuckland @EliteResumes Your Career Brand: A Scary Trick or an Appealing Treat?, @KCCareerCoach How to avoid mistakes on your resume, @Keppie_Careers Sc-sc-scary Resume Mistakes, @erinkennedycprw A Flawed Resume is a Scary Prospect, @KatCareerGal Job Search Angst: Like Clouds Mounting Before a Storm, @ValueIntoWords Does Your Career Costume Fit You?, @expatcoachmegan