Many professionals fail to realize is that resume writing has significantly evolved over time – and continues to do so. Using some of these practices may make your resume look dated. Let’s take a look at three resume writing practices that you need to abandon immediately when writing a modern resume.
Objective Statements
For a long time, the objective statement was a big trend in resumes. This statement would typically be the first thing someone would see after your personal information. It would detail your goals in a brief statement of career intent.
Objective statements have largely gone the way of the dinosaur and should not be included in a modern resume. Looking back, it is easy to see why they were eliminated. After all, the objective does not speak to the value you have to offer or the hiring needs of the employer.
When crafting your resume include a professional summary statement or summary of qualifications that answers why they should hire you instead of another candidate.
Example of a professional summary statement:
Sales executive with reputation for building and maintaining relationships to win business and expand accounts. Compelling negotiator respected for providing strategic recommendations to executives, leading change, and reviving partnerships. Expert at managing relationships and consistently streamlining processes to grow revenue.
Our blog post ‘120 Action Verbs to Strengthen Your Resume‘ will help you identify compelling action verbs to create your professional summary statement and resume.
Your Full Address
Times have changed and with job applications occurring online, your full address is no longer necessary. A company does not really need your address unless they are actually hiring you.
With one of the negative aspects of the World Wide Web being privacy concerns, scrubbing your address from your resume is a good thing to do.
It won’t hurt you in terms of the application but can help protect your privacy. It also gives you that most valuable aspect of a resume – extra space to detail more experiences.
References Available Upon Request
Another convention that seems to still be around from time to time is closing a resume with the phrase “references available upon request.”
Trust us, everyone knows this. The employer knows that they can ask for references. Many of them will even have you enter a few references when you complete an online application.
Having “references available upon request” on your resume ultimately serves no purpose. Save the redundancy and give yourself more room to work with by abandoning this practice. It is simply unnecessary.
Conclusion
Those are 3 outdated resume writing practices to avoid when writing a modern resume. Download a copy of our free resume review guide to ensure your resume meets today’s standards.
