DO NOT USE A FANCY TEMPLATE RESUME

One of the easiest ways to get yourself rejected after applying for a role is by using a fancy templated resume.

Simply put, they’re not efficient for the ready to quickly analyze your qualifications, skills, and experience to see if you’re a good fit for the role.

Think about it.

Recruiters and Hiring Managers aren’t spending more than 10-15 seconds reviewing your resume.

So while it might look nice and pretty, the actual content in the resume has a higher chance to get lost in translation.

Unless you’re in a creative or design oriented role, we want to optimize your resume for the content itself making it easy for the reader to understand your impact, not for it’s “aesthetics”.

Let’s take a look at some of the more common resumes that may qualify as “fancy templated”.

A couple quick points we’ll want to keep in mind:

• Resumes should have a boring, basic format

• They should be easy to skim/read

• The bullet points should clearly articulate “what you did, how you did it, and what you accomplished”

Let’s dive in 👇:

1: The Columned Resume

You may look at this resume and say “Rando, this looks like a boring format?”

Sure, you’re not wrong there.

But does it check off the other two boxes? No.

For example, the bullet points are generic roles and responsibilities. If you look at the bottom, they’ll list a handful of technologies listed.

How am I supposed to know what technologies are used where?

A “Software Engineer” can mean 50 different things.

Let’s say I’m looking for someone who is strong with Java. Sure, Java is listed at the bottom, but how do I know if they’re using it At the healthcare company or the telecom company?

Sure, your argument may be “well why don’t you call this Joey Jabroni person and ask them yourself?”

Why would I waste my time that if I have a ton of other resumes that are written better?

If I were to call every single candidate who had this resume for each role I was working on, I could potentially waste hours of my time. And in our industry, time is money, so that’s not acceptable.

Even if I decided to call this person and pass them onto the manager, I risk my reputation for them having the same exact concerns I did in the first place. (Hint: most of them do)

So just do yourself a favor, avoid these types of columns, and don’t give them a reason to get you rejected.

2: The Skills Matrix / Photo Resume

So we have similar concerns on this one where they are using generic roles/responsibilities and the hard skills aren’t in the actual bullet points, so you can’t actually tell what skills are being used where.

But for this, she’s adding in a skills matrix where she ranks her experience.

First - how is this experience actually being judged? What is the source? All of this is completely biased and invalid, there is a good chance this will just get overlooked every single time.

Second, no one wants to see a photo on the resume these days. Out of the ~700 resumes I’ve placed, none of them had a photo.

Further, how is all this info going to parse into the ATS if you were to apply directly?

Chances are it would get all jumbled up when you directly apply, making it hard to read for the recruiter and hiring manager, making you very likely to get rejected.

3: The Boxes / Sectioned Off Resume

So some of the concepts from the first two resumes apply here.

The photo. The skills section vs experiences section.

But let’s argue that this guy even has his skills perfectly written out in the work experience section. Then you could argue it’s easy to go from his summary, to his work experience, then glance wherever if needed quickly right?

WRONG!

Because the second this thing hits the ATS when you apply online, again, this resume will not get parsed in correctly and you’ll get all jumbled up.

Don’t risk it. Use a boring format.

4: A good formatted “boring resume”, unclear skills

Ok so let’s pretend you formatted your resume the exact way that I recommend.

You can’t just stop there. We’re still not done!

Some of the same concepts from above still apply.

For example, this person has called himself a front end engineer and looks like they do some freelance work currently.

Go to their skills section.

How is the reader supposed to know what technologies he used at Media Company? The backend could either be reactjs or nodejs based off his skills

How am I supposed to know what front end technologies he used everywhere else? Virtually all the main ones are listed in the skills, and I highly doubt he is using literally every tech stack listed in the skills section at every job.

So even this “boring” formatted resume still won’t pass through me because it’s unclear what skills he used where.

As always, thanks for reading.

If you have a fancy templated resume, go on my twitter profile and you’ll find some free resume templates you can use.

And even if you have a boring resume, make sure that it still showcases what you did, how you did it, and what you achieved.

If you’re looking for some professional help, you can book a call with me here:

(note, I’m probably going to raise prices soon as demand is increasing every week and I don’t have the time to service everyone, so if you’re on the fence I’d sign up to lock in the price)

If you’re looking for a basic guide to set you on the right path, you can check out my job seeker’s ebook for only $9.99 here