Your Resume: Detailed or Just Plain Messy?

June 30, 2012

 

There are countless ways to format a resume and no perfect solution. You will find claims that “this way is the right way,” but the reality is that it depends on the situation – what kind of experience you have and what position, or audience, you are targeting.

The one thing I do know: If I see a resume that doesn’t get to the point or is all over the place, chances are I will pass on it. We have so many resumes to look at, and if I can’t understand your resume I’m not going to spend an hour trying to figure it out.

Clean It Up

  • Do not provide a long description of all your experience and then also list your positions separately at the bottom. Separate your experience into the positions you have worked.
  • Do not ramble about each position — it will most likely get repetitive. There is a fine line and absolutely such a thing as too much information.
  • The one-page resume rule may go out the window once you are looking for your third or fourth position — if you cut it down to one page we will not get nearly enough information about your positions — but, that said, don’t go overboard. Five-page resumes are a bit excessive.
  • Do not list every single technology you have heard of. If you are in IT and have technical skills, list the ones you have hands-on experience with and would be comfortable utilizing daily in your next position. Also, organize them. List development languages, operation systems, CRMs, databases, etc. separately so that a non-technical person (HR) can find them easily.
  • Do not use tables, especially with the borders visible. You may think it is a great way to organize your resume, but in reality it looks too busy and not clean.
  • Make sure your document will translate well to other computers and other software. I have opened resumes that are all of a sudden written with wingdings, or the text is overlapping. Those get thrown out. If you’re not sure, send it to a friend and have them try to open it.
  • Use spaces! There is no reason to have all your positions and lines jumbled together, space them out and make it easy to navigate.
  • Use bullets. If you resume is a novel with paragraphs I will not read it.

Keeping your resume clean and easy to navigate is the key to getting noticed. I am sure that strong candidates are passed on because of the ridiculous formatting on their resume. Keep it simple while still adding the important details.

 

Senior Talent Manager, Engineering

<strong>Meghan Maher</strong> is Senior Talent Manager, Engineering, actively recruiting top talent for OpenView and its Portfolio Companies. Her tech background has helped OpenView hire for nearly 20 IT and engineering positions. Meghan began her career at AVID Technical Resources, where she was a Technical Recruiter for two years.