Top 10 things to leave off your resume

So you’ve finally decided to start looking for that next job. You’ve used the free Classifind.com.au service and you’ve found the perfect opportunity. Great pay, great location, great organization. Now to put a resume together. Before you put fingers to keyboard, there are some things you should remember to leave off your resume.

There are two important things to keep in mind about resumes: First, by producing a resume, you are not aiming to get a job - you are aiming to get an interview. Second, your resume will be read by a busy person: it needs to be clear, concise and clutter-free.

With those points in mind, the following are ten things best left off your resume:

Your photo. Unless you are applying to be the new Elle, Kate or Gisele, a photo on a resume is unnecessary. A poor photo (which most are) is might generate a few laughs around the recruiting office but it won’t strengthen your position as an applicant.

A ‘Personal Mission Statement’. Generic statements which tell the recruiter that you aim to benefit mankind whilst maintaining a healthy and sustainable lifestyle have no place on a resume. The CV is about what you’ve done, not what you aim to do. Save your hopes and dreams for the interview.

Generic skills. Do you have ‘excellent communication skills’ and the ‘ability to work as a team member’? Great. So does everyone else. Listing these sorts of skills does nothing to make you stand out from the job hunting crowd. Instead, demonstrate your skills when you describe your achievements.

School jobs. Unless you are very early in your career, the fact that you successfully flipped hamburgers for three years as a teenager is unlikely to be relevant to your application for an accounting position. Leave it out.

Details of really old jobs. Along the same lines, if you are well into your career and applying for your tenth job in 25 years, you can safely condense your early jobs down to a single line: who you worked for and what your position was.

Gaps. Never leave a gap in your job history. If you travelled for three years early in your career, then make this clear. Likewise if you were unemployed for a period. Leaving out these sorts of things simply leaves the recruiter to draw their own conclusions, and they generally won’t be positive.

Lies. Never, ever, make up qualifications, jobs or positions, nor attribute yourself with skills that you don’t have. You will be found out eventually and the consequences could be dire.

Your age. Not telling lies doesn’t mean that you have to tell everything. In most cases, it is perfectly okay for you to leave your age and date-of-birth off your resume. Discrimination on the basis of age is illegal but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. And in any case, if the recruiter really wants to work out your age, your education and job history will give them a fair idea.

Irrelevant qualifications. You may still be proud of your bronze swimming certificate and responsible serving of alcohol qualification, but if they aren’t relevant to your aspirations as a computer programmer, keep them to yourself.

Long-winded job descriptions. Don’t write long, unbroken paragraphs describing each of your jobs in great detail. Focus on your responsibilities and specific achievements, use bullet points and be succinct. You can’t impress if no one bothers to read what you’ve written.

Of course, every rule is made to be broken and there are exceptions to all the above. If, for instance, the job advertisement you found at Classifind.com.au specifically asks for you to include a photo, then include a good photo. If your school job as a junior manager at McDonalds is relevant to the management job you are applying for, leave it in. The magic question should always be: “Is it relevant?”.