1. Personal Details
This is a professional document, not a dating service. Your age, race, marital status, sexual orientation, or hobbies (unless pivotal to the job) should be removed from your resume ASAP.
We know you want to present the real you to recruiters and hiring managers, and you want to stand out, but that opportunity will come in the interview stage. First, you need to prove your skills, qualifications, and abilities so you can make it to an interview.
Leave personal details out and allow your resume to speak for itself.
2. Your Photo
Unless you’re an actor or model (not very common in the agriculture industry), this is unnecessary. Recruiters and hiring managers shouldn’t care what you look like, only that you can perform the job. If they really want to know what you look like they can always get online and check your social media accounts, which they will do anyway, but not because they want your picture.
Your picture adds nothing to your resume, it’s just wasted space.
3. Negative Information
Your resume should be positive. Never speak negatively about previous coworkers or employers, just focus on the position you held. Interviewers want to know what skills and experience you gained from each position that will make you a good choice for their opening.
Explanations for blank periods in your employment history can be given during the interview, if asked, but don’t waste precious space on your resume. Just make sure you have good explanations ready and keep things positive.
Nobody wants to hire someone with a poor attitude, which is all they see when your resume contains negativity.
4. Spelling, Grammatical, and Factual Errors
This is the most common issue encountered. What’s worse is that it’s easily avoided!
Please use spellcheck. It’s a handy little tool, and the best part is that it’s FREE!
Spellcheck may not catch every mistake though, so have someone proofread your resume to ensure readability and understanding. Then have someone else do it. Then repeat, until you are confident everything is in tip-top shape. You may overlook that typo or grammatical error because you’ve read your resume too many times, but fresh eyes may catch it.
It’s difficult for a recruiter or hiring manager to believe you when you list skills such as organized, focused, detail-oriented, communication, computer proficiency, writing, etc. when your resume contains spelling, grammatical, and factual errors.
5. Unprofessional E-Mail Address
There are so many free e-mail services available that there’s no excuse for an unprofessional e-mail address. JohnSmith123@gmail.com looks a lot better than JohnIsSuperAwesome@gmail.com, so do yourself a favor and leave a good impression with recruiters and hiring managers.
Remember this simple equation:
unprofessional email address = unprofessional employee
6. Your Street Address
Normally, and especially if you’re willing to relocate for a new job, you can leave your location off entirely. If you want an employer to know you’re local, you can put your city and state, but leave off your street address for security reasons. This is considered Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and has no bearing in hiring decisions. Potential employers do not need to know where you live until you’ve been hired and need to fill out employment documents.
Again, don’t waste precious space with unnecessary information.
7. Irrelevant Information
While you should always write a cover letter for each position you apply for, you should also tweak your resume to include the information that is most relevant, and remove information that isn’t. For example, leave your high school information off, unless this is your first job or highest level of education. If you have work experience that doesn’t necessarily translate to the position applied for, you can include it, but keep your description brief to save room for those positions which do.
Focus on your last 15 years of employment, or last three positions if longer than 15 years. If you have relevant work experience beyond 15 years, you may include it but can leave off those dates to conserve space.
8. Decorations
Again, this is a professional document and should appear as such. Don’t use fonts, colors, images, or other decorations to make your resume stand out.
If you do it certainly will stand out, just not in a good way.
9. Your references
Have your references prepared on a separate sheet/s of paper for when you make it to the interview stage. Don’t write “available upon request” – that’s just more wasted space.
If an employer wants your references, they’ll ask for them.
10. Desired Salary
It’s fine to have an idea of the salary you want (we suggest it in fact), but putting it on your resume or cover letter may send the wrong message. Even worse, you may receive just what you asked for, which may be less than the employer was willing to pay.
Don’t toss your ability to negotiate a wage out the door, leave desired salary off your resume.
This concludes our list of ten common resume mistakes you should fix ASAP, but there are others out there. Good luck finding your dream job in ag! Try using the AgPloyment.com Job Board to find it!
Have we missed anything? Help us out by adding your thoughts below!