In my almost nine years of recruiting, I have reviewed hundreds of thousands of resumes. In most cases, if you have the right skills and a decent enough looking resume, it is enough to get you an interview. It may not get you a job you are looking for, but really, that is not the purpose of a resume. The purpose is to market you with a roughly two to three page really big business card. This hopefully creates enough interest in your background to warrant a phone call or a face-to-face meeting with your new potential employer. After submission of the resume, the following — one to five interviews, reference checks, offer negotiations — are the things that really get you the job.
If your resume contains something that stops you from ever getting an interview, then you will, of course, never get the job. Yes, what if a recruiter, HR person or hiring manager looks down at your resume and by the sheer words on the paper elicits a cry of “What the F%&k”??!! This, my curious blog reader, is the “What the F%&K Factor” or “What not to write in a resume”.
Here are a couple of real life examples of resumes that demonstrate what I am talking about:
I was given a resume for a VP of Engineering position. His background was pretty typical. He received a BSEE (Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering) and started out his career as an Engineer. After 5 years, he became an Engineering Manager and, after a few more years, became a Director of Engineering, then a Senior Director, and then a Vice President of Engineering. It made sense; certainly a pretty normal career path.
But here is where the resume took a left turn. Listed just above his most recent VP position was “Doorman / Bouncer at Joe’s Tavern”. He described for about a paragraph how he greeted people at the door, broke up fights and various other activities. This was a 6 month job.
Shortly after the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Telecom industry crashed. It was not uncommon for people to take just about any job to pay the bills. But, don’t put it in your resume!
Another case of the “ What the F%&K Factor” occurred when I read the resume of a Senior Director. After 20 years of experience in business, one might assume he would be aware of the dos & don’ts of what you can put in a resume, but not in this case.
I typically do not read every bit down to the clubs & hobbies when reading a resume. However, on this particular day, on this particular resume, I did. And sure enough, I was very glad I did before I submitted him to anyone. Listed under organizations was “Grand Marshall of the Covenant of Satan”. Wow! That definitely caught me off guard.
Now I believe in the concept of live & let live. If you want to worship the devil, cross dress, or any number of controversial activities, as long as you are not hurting anyone else, I am cool with it.
But the whole point of this blog is that if you put something unusual on your resume that stands out, make sure it enhances your presentation and does not detracts from it.
If you have stories that exhibit the “What The F%&K Factor”, I’d love to hear about them.
Just send them to bigcheese@wirelessexecutiverecruiter.com or just add a comment to the blog.
5 Responses to ““What the F%&K Factor” or “What not to write in a resume””
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I’ve had a few names on the resumes that are had to get pass”
Har Dik, Hung Well, Seymour Butt and Phat Chin.
One of the most amusing resumes I came across started with the line “I am exceptionally brilliant”. I couldn’t help asking in the interview how long the candidate had been in Mensa and was surprised to find out that he wasn’t even a member. He was a good candidate and was offered the job. That was despite his resume, although I guess you could say that a line like that certainly gets attention!
With the latest TEXT craze, I can tell you that a growing number of job seekers are certainly taking short-cuts when writing their resumes. During my last phase of hiring, I came across probably half a dozen resumes in which potential candidates were using TEXT short-cut verbiages. Although this is the latest craze, it honestly makes the candidate look uneducated. Worse yet, are the candidates that were hired, obviously having someone proof read their resume, only to be blasting memos to all the executives in the company with their short hand TEXT codes. These youngsters are either going to have to learn how to write in a second language – proper English, or someone is going to have to invent a decoder devise for dinosaurs like myself to employee this new bread of worker. T Y & hv a gr8 nite
Greatings,
http://www.wirelessexecutiverecruiter.com to GoogleReader!
Thank you
AlexAxe
Instead of being honest and writing actual crappy jobs you had to take during hard economic times just lie or leave a giant blank spot in your resume. That always works. It is always much better looking on a resume having a giant, unemployed, blank spot than demonstrating you actually went out in the world and did what was needed to survive.