Services like VisualCV.com will go a long way to help you stand out with a better resume that you can enhance and share in ways an old resume will never do, but you still need to watch out for the pitfalls of a bad resume.

Video Transcription

My years as a hiring manager, I saw a lot of resumes. Some were good, some were bad, some were boring but some really stood up because if there are some mistakes that you should avoid if you want to get hired. [Music playing] This is Dave Sanders and in this video we are going to cover five mistakes that you should avoid if you want to get hired or if you want to maintain your personal and professional brand and they are lying, bashing-bashing, typos and TMI. Lying should be the most obvious thing to people but apparently it is not. I do not know why but when you read about it in the paper you will see government officials, you will see executives and they are all cut with all kinds of business. These are things in their resumes from job history that never occurred, skills they do not have. Sometimes even lying about the grades they received or even schools that they went to and this is such an easy thing to avoid so just keep all the stuff that is not true out on your resume. If you have a particular skill that you may be have a passing familiarity with but it is not what your strong points and you know that the employer is going to be interested in it, do not build it up present it as it is. If something you are familiar with then leave it back. The next one is passion and remembers that I heard mention that twice. Well, that is because there are two kinds of passion. The first is the passion of your former employer and this just does not make any sense but I have seen cover letters on resumes where people just suddenly let lose on their former employer where maybe an employer for several years ago and you just do not know the person that is reading your resume had knows. They can be related to somebody to you passion. You just do not know. It does not make any sense to do this. It puts you in a bad like it really leaves a bad impression with hiring managers on human resources departments so leave this kind of stuff out on your resumes leave it on your cover letters. The next one is bashing the company that you are trying to get employed with. This may seem a little odd but I have seen this too. In fact, one time I referred somebody to a job. He should have been issuing for getting employed and yet he did a little bit of research on the web or something and found that one of the members of the board of directors had some political affiliation to this guy he would like and so he just win off on every single person here he with. Eventually, they just told him to get lost because he was presenting himself as a complete knock off and it is unfortunate because I know that the guy certainly has some passions but I would not called nuts but he certainly presented himself that way and that is not the way you would come off so make sure that we had any kind of passion have on your resume. Number four is typos and again this is something that seems obvious but you see it all to laugh with. Typos are pretty easy to mess especially if you have been up late working on your resume. It is something you are writing on yourself and so obviously you are going to miss a lot of little typos. Sometimes double words, flipping around words, your spell checker might miss something because you are actually spelled a word with a correctly spelled word that means something else and all of these things can really get check. The resume is obviously something that is representing you. It is probably one of your most important documents so if you think that there is any risk that you are going to miss some typos go to one of the websites like google.com, craigslist, e-werks,getafreelancer.com, and for a very small amount of money sometimes it is almost 20 bucks you can get a professional writer and take a look at your resume. Maybe it makes some suggestions beyond simple typos and that can make a huge a lot of difference. The final mistake that you should avoid is TMI that is too much information in case if you are not familiar with what those letters mean and again this is something that you would be amazed. How many times that I have seen these in resumes and cover letters where people just put some of the most bizarre personal information. I am not going to share you examples I can probably do hours of videos with weird stories about things I have seen in resumes and cover letters but if you keep paying attention to those five elements and that again are lying, bashing-bashing, typos and TMI. You would really improve your resume and certainly improve your chances of getting hired and maintaining your bread. [Music playing]