Comments on: 10 Deadly Sins of Resume Writing

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:48:19 +0000

That is to say, I clearly don’t care about good writing since I didn’t review my own post. Otherwise, I would have removed the duplicate “not.”
Is that egg on my face?

By: Bob

Bob — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:47:17 +0000

Heather,
If you’re so concerned with good writing, why didn’t you review your post?
You should not not to split an infinitive. You write:

“It isn’t that difficult to properly spell, use good grammar and use punctuation properly.”

That should read “It isn’t that difficult to spell properly,”

By: Ove

Ove — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:52:50 +0000

Burt,

what you are proposing is apparently under some debate. To me, the “and” is in itself a separator and a comma would make the sentence look funny. But that’s my opinion.

By: Lorraine

Lorraine — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:49:16 +0000

Consider keeping your resume in plain text. When you submit a resume through a job board or a company’s career site, it is uploaded into their resume database (also known as an Applicant Tracking System). Your resume needs to be searchable (keywords) and not littered with special designs or characters. If a recruiter can’t find your resume through keyword searching in the database, it won’t be found!

By: Burt

Burt — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:52:43 +0000

Heather,

This is a run-on…”Why don’t people in this country value the ability to write well and why don’t people learn how to do just that?”

It needs a comma before “and” to separate the two independent clauses.

By: Susanne

Susanne — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:18:50 +0000

I’ve helped my husband find several jobs with a resume I made in the old AppleWorks “drawing” program. Break free from the cookie cutter!
I also have thrown out a bunch of resumes with grammatical errors and typos.
Now for a question, what do list when you’ve been a stay at home mom for four years?
I’ve been volunteering, and go to school full time, but I still need to find a summer job after five years of unemployment.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:48:47 +0000

Really enjoying this series (using it in place of text book readings for my Technical Communications class), but I was curious about #6. You write: “if you’re using multiple fonts, colors, sizes, and titles – chances are your attempts are going to look messy.” For me, that is the opposite of design. A well designed resume is well-designed because it doesn’t do all of those things and, instead, artfully manipulates white space and maybe font size to produce a readable and usable document. Design in resume writing, for me, involves using a minimum of bullets, geegaws (lines, etc.), and crazy fonts to suggest purpose and highlight the content.

Also, out of curiosity, what’s wrong with Times New Roman? I can’t be one to talk, I guess, as my resume is set in Verdana, but it seems that, as far as readability goes, Times is quite good (if it is a little generic). It’s especially true given that serif fonts are easier to scan, I think.

Anyway, great series.

By: wrobin

wrobin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:47:14 +0000

I’m not sure I agree with #8 ( Don’t do chronological order. )

I understand your thinking on it, but it can probably backfire on you.

Another resume advice post I recently read had the following reasoning for saying not to do functional resumes:
“the format makes managers suspicious and more intent on piecing together a timeline of your employment”

And I totally agree with that. Having myself done that on both a functional resume, and more or less chronological one (as your advocating) where they sorted the order to put the part I was supposed to be more interested at the top. I had to go through and resort it in my mind to prove they weren’t hiding something, and felt vaguely like they were trying to manipulate or slip something past me by doing it that way. It wasn’t a positive to me.

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 03:40:49 +0000

Ouch!
Melissa, I think you really landed in sh-t that time!
I think we all need to s l o w d o w n in our lives. Breathe. Haste really does make waste.
And don’t forget to proofread

By: Heather

Heather — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:41:55 +0000

Melissa,

I can’t believe you sent any of that to any prospective employer. That was a run-on sentence with too many commas and too much redundancy. How many times can you say, “Smiths Street College” in your run-on sentence?

If you were really offered an interview, even despite your obvious mistake with the “Felix College” thing, I’d be truly shocked.

Why don’t people in this country value the ability to write well and why don’t people learn how to do just that? It isn’t that difficult to properly spell, use good grammar and use punctuation properly. I just don’t understand it. We are the only country in the world who proudly mutilates its own language! It’s so sad!