With more than 10 million job openings, finding a job should be easy, right? Not if your resume isn’t up to par.

As the continues to recover from the pandemic, many employers are looking to hire. Even though you may have more options than you’ve had in recent years, you will still need a stellar resume so you can stand out and land the job.

While there is ample advice out there about what you should include on your resume, just as important is knowing what not to include. Here are some things you should leave oof your resume.

Cliché and Meaningless Words

You may be a team-player people person, but if you want to keep the attention of hiring managers, you should leave these buzz words off your resume.

Career Builder recently surveyed hiring managers and HR pros to learn what words or phrases they don’t want to see on resumes. These were some of the top answers:

• Best of breed
• Go-getter
• Think outside the box
• Synergy
• Go-to person

Irrelevant Personal Information

As you craft your resume, you may be tempted to include personal information about yourself so potential employers can get to know the “real” you. Doing this would be a mistake. There will be plenty of time for them to get to know you during the interview process. Until then, you need to keep things professional.

A resume should stick to your education, work experience, professional qualifications, and skills. Any information about your family, religious beliefs, interests, or political ideology should be left out.

Pronouns

How should you talk about yourself on your resume? Do you use “I,” or should you talk about yourself in the third person?

Your resume should never be written in the third person. Use first-person but leave out the pronoun “I.” For example, if you’re an administrative assistant, instead of saying “I coordinated travel for senior leadership,” simply say “Coordinated travel for senior leadership.”

You should organize your responsibilities in a bulleted list, using an action verb at the beginning of each bullet point. For example, rather than saying “I ran reports,” say “Generated reports.”

Hobbies and Interests

There’s limited space on your resume, and you want to use that real estate to effectively communicate why you’re the best person for the job. Don’t waste space by listing your hobbies and interests when they have no relation to your professional qualifications. Unless your hobbies outside of work directly relate to the skills you can bring to a potential employer, you should leave them off your resume.

Is Your Resume Ready for Potential Employers?

If you have a solid resume and you’re ready to find the next step in your career, contact Burchard and Associates. We help accounting and finance professionals find career opportunities at some of St. Louis’s top employers. Check out our available opportunities or contact us today to get your job search started.