5 Things to Avoid Putting on Your Resume

Based on her professional experience in that field, Erica Rivera (@careerdivacoaching), a Chicago-based senior recruiter at Google, shared some resume tips with her followers on Tiktok.

The Tiktok video keeps going viral as over 2.8 million tiktokers have watched it, and the number is still counting.

She posted the video to advise and educate her viewers or followers on the need to stop putting some content in their resumes in order to meet the current ways of writing resumes in this century and let go of the 1970 CV-writing technique.

Some of her recommendations are summarised as follows:

1. Your Address

It is not necessary to include the full address, but rather the City and State only.

2. Objective Statement

The objective statement should be completely removed.

3. Work History and Experience

There is no need to write all your entire work history and experience, but the resume should be tailored based on the position you are applying for.

4. Weak Action Verbs

She advised that job seekers should stop using "I held..." or "I was responsible...", and specifically displayed some recommended action verbs that sound professional, as explained later in this post.

5. References Are Available Upon Request

There is no need to put this in at all. If your employer finds them important or needs them, they will definitely contact you. So, you should stop putting it.

Insightfully, all her recommendations are reasonable as to why they should be avoided or why applicants should stop putting them on their resumes, especially in this present century.

The first recommendation stated the removal of the address, which is very good to prevent giving a personal home address to unknown persons in the process of seeking jobs for security purposes, and to make the resume relevant for a long time without the need to change the address by just including the City and State.

The second recommendation recommended that “objective statement” should be completely removed so as to allow the resume or CV writer to tailor his or her objective statement to the organisational or company needs accordingly when he or she is being interviewed.

The third recommendation is centred on the need to only write your work history and experience on the resume based on the position the applicant is applying for, meaning that work history and experience should be adjusted to fit in for the available vacancy.

The fourth recommendation was the opinion that “weak action verbs” should be avoided and more “professional action verbs” should be used instead, such as streamlined, managed, implemented, improved, strategised, produced, increased, generated, etc.

The fifth recommendation averred that “if the references are needed, they will be required.” This is also a plus for the applicants, as they can easily send reference lists to their potential employers on demand, which means that the names of referrers can vary on different demands instead of using the same referrers for every job application. 

Watch the video via this link:

https://www.tiktok.com/@careerdivacoaching/video/7138837823611997486?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1

Credit: Tiktok | CareerDivaCoaching