16 Ways to Make your Resume Stand Out and Keep it out of the Trash

Make sure your resume stays on top!

Read these great tips on how to make your resume stand out. These tips will improve your resume.

1. Make sure to read and follow all of the instructions. This includes the requirements for the position. If they have minimum requirements for a position, such as a college degree, and you do not have a college degree or you have left it off of your resume, they will toss your resume.
2. NO TYPOS- This is a big deal! Make sure to spell everything correctly, write complete sentences and make sure to use correct capitalization and punctuation. This is one of your first tests as a potential employee. You don’t have to be a great speller but you DO need to be able to proofread and run a spell check. Remember first impressions are REALLY important.
3. Do not staple, fold or put a paperclip in your resume. This helps the person who is reviewing the resumes so they don’t have to remove paper clips or staples if they are scanning the documents. Make sure you use at least a 9 x 12 mailing envelope. DO NOT fold your resume and put it in a little envelope.
4. Use mailing labels on your envelope. Make sure you have printed the labels and they are not
   handwritten.
5. Professional paper– Make sure to buy resume paper. It is thicker than regular copy paper.
6. Don’t use an unprofessional email address. I personally don’t agree with this one too much but I have seen other HR staff that immediately think of someone with an AOL email as “behind the times”. If you are applying for a tech position and still use AOL, you should probably open a GMAIL account. If you are not applying to a tech position and your resume is strong then I wouldn’t worry too much about this one.
7. Don’t use “I” and “me” in your resume. Create statements like “Created training seminar for over 100 participants” instead of “I created a seminar…”
8. Don’t include references. This can take up valuable space on your resume and they will ask for references later if they want them.
   No clip art! Enough said.
9. Don’t include an objective on your resume. The objective is just restating the obvious, you want a job. Instead, replace with a powerful headline and qualification summary.
10. Don’t lie. Now you can stretch the truth a bit but be sure you can back it up if questioned. A bad lie would be to say you have a college degree and you don’t have one. That is a bad lie!
11. Don’t say “resume” on your resume. No need to restate the obvious.
12. No personal section. I haven’t seen one of these in a while but if you still have a section on your resume that lets people know you like to knit in your underwear, TAKE IT OFF (the section not your underwear)!
13. No pictures. Even if you are a supermodel don’t put your picture on your resume, it is weird.
14. No salary requirements. This leaves the door open for negotiations. If you include an expected salary range and it doesn’t fit the position they will automatically toss your resume because your don’t fit the requirements.
15. Leave off hobbies. Again the knitting in your underwear, we don’t need or want to know.

16 Tips and Ideas to Make Sure Your Resume Stays on Top