Résumé Advice from the Business Management Department
The purpose of a well-written Résumé is to get you an interview with a prospective employer. There are many formats and styles available for presenting a powerful and highly effective Résumé. Keep in mind however, that your major purpose in writing your Résumé is to paint a picture of yourself in the mind of the reader. The better the picture, the better understanding the reader will have of who you are and what skills and abilities you may contribute to their organization.
Without eliminating the individual creativity that should be present on a Résumé, we offer the following list of things to avoid when preparing your Résumé.
1. Do not write your Résumé from your perspective. You must put yourself in the reader’s shoes and write your Résumé in a way that is vivid, clear and impactful to the reader(s).
2. Do not dilute your Résumé with information that is not relevant to the position for which you are applying. Your Résumé, in most cases, will be quickly reviewed and if you have excess content, your major selling points may be lost or difficult to extract in the rapid review process.
3. Do not lie or ‘fudge’ information on your Résumé. If you accomplished something, state it. If you did not, DON’T LIST IT!
4. Do not include a boring and formulaic objective statement that simply states the obvious.
5. Do not under-sell your educational experience at BYU-Idaho.
6. Do not assume that simply because you have ‘spell checked’ your Résumé that it is mistake or error free. Proofread it, and then find others to proof your Résumé as well. Mistakes, such as unintentional changes in font size or type, poor spacing, and misspelled words are instant Résumé Killers!
7. Do not list ‘References Available Upon Request.’ This can waste potentially valuable space. It will be assumed that you will bring or provide references during any interview you may obtain.
8. Do not print your Résumé on a bubble or ink-jet printer. Use a Laser-Jet only! The library has many Laser-Jet printers which provide a much cleaner and professional looking print for your Résumé.
9. Do not print your Résumé on ‘colored’ or thicker paper. This is highly unprofessional and in today’s business environment where your Résumé may be faxed, scanned or copied, you cannot take that chance. White paper, up to 24 lb. bond, will provide you with the most professional looking resume.
10. Do not use first person or possessive pronouns. The words "I", "me", "my", "mine", "our" and others, should never appear in a Résumé.
11. Do not use a Résumé template or Résumé Wizard. Popular word-processing programs such as Microsoft Word all have templates or wizards that do the layout of Résumés automatically. There are several reasons NOT to use them including, but not limited to: cookie-cutter appearance (your Résumé will look like every other person's that used that template), lack of flexibility for individual needs, out-of-date formats, and lack of flexibility in editing/layout changes.
12. Do not under-sell your experience. Simply stating something like “Directly responsible for training all employees.” may actually hurt you more than it helps you. In that situation you force the reader, who knows very little or nothing about you, to guess what it was you actually trained all employees for. Consider the following statement instead: “Directly responsible for all new employee orientation and company-wide OSHA Safety training.”
13. Do not list dates on the left hand side of your Résumé. Your Résumé should be formatted in such a way that allows for any date or dates to be presented on the right hand side of your Résumé.
14. If you served a full-time mission Do not list “Volunteer Missionary Service.” The best way to list a mission is as follows: “LDS Mission, Venezuela Caracas East 2002-2004.”
15. The majority of students at BYU-Idaho will not have the skills nor depth of work experience to warrant a Résumé that exceeds one page in length.