By Adrienne Erin
Contributor, Online Career Tips
In such a difficult job market, it’s so important to have a flawless job application. This makes it critical to ensure that your resume is relevant, polished and truly showcases your qualifications. While including your skills and experiences on a resume is a necessity, chances are your CV includes some less-than-vital information for your potential employer. Continue reading to find out when and why to cut certain qualifications from your resume.
Your Technology Skills Are Old-Fashioned
When revising your resume, make sure you update your skill-set, especially your technology related qualifications. If you are still listing now basic computer skills like competencies with the Internet and Microsoft Word, it’s time to trim the fat. Instead of listing basic sills, include newer technology and software you may know how to use or even choose not to include technology competencies at all, making your resume more concise.
You’ve Made a Career Change
If you have recently decided to change your career path, chances are your resume will need a serious overhaul. As employers typically only want to know about your relevant work experience, populating your resume with unnecessary information won’t help you get an interview or job offer.
As an alternative to listing all of your previous irrelevant jobs and describing your duties, pick only a few – and only the most important – previous jobs to include. When providing details about these jobs, list only general skills that might be of interest to an employer in your new field. For example, if your previous job was directing a recovery center in Florida for drug and alcohol abuse, but now you’re breaking into the field of finance, don’t list all of your duties directly related to rehab. Instead, describe your organizational and managerial skills, which may carry over into your new job.
Your Awards Are Outdated
When editing your resume, take the time to update your awards. While you may be proud of your past achievements, most likely some of them may be outdated and irrelevant, and a potential employer won’t share your sentiments. So, if your current resume still lists your perfect attendance award, most likely to succeed superlative or that you were in the national junior honors society, it’s time to hit the delete button. Also, make sure any awards you still list are more relevant and prestigious and make you stand out.
Your Work Experience Is Ancient History
When trying to make yourself look good on paper, you may want to include all your previous positions. However, as employers and hiring managers have limited time, wasting it with meaningless material won’t help your application reach the top of the heap. As an alternative, format your resume to include only jobs you’ve had in the past ten years and only those that are significant or relevant.
Rebuilding your resume can be both a stressful and time-consuming task. Determining which skills, experiences, awards and previous positions are worth including and which are worth deleting can be a gray area, so it’s best to remember quality is better than quantity. By choosing to highlight only important and relevant qualifications, your resume will stand out more, making you a more promising candidate.
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