Writing great resumes that will actually get you hiredNovember 7, 2008Copyright 2008 Sovren Group, Inc.May be used by anyone, except competitors of Sovren, with attribution and links to sovren.com.

These tips are about how to write a resume that a human will read and like. Feel free to disregard some or all of these points, especially if you are enjoying your time off.

1. Shut up already. Recruiters will make a snap decision in 10 seconds as to whether they want to read your resume. If your resume is really long, and crammed full of tedious detail, it will be skipped. Seriously.

The number one mistake people make on their resumes is the same mistake that they make in interviews and the same mistake they make on the witness stand: they say too much. No one cares about the incredible minutiae of your 500 job responsibilities and accomplishments. By droning on about trivial and irrelevant details, you make yourself look, well… trivial and irrelevant.

I’m 100% serious. When people ask me to review their resumes, the most important change I make is to delete about 50% of the content. When I’m done, I’ve probably changed 20% of the phrasing, deleted 50% of the detail, and fixed problems that will prevent the resume from being understood correctly by resume parsing software.

Here’s an example. Let’s say your last job was as a receptionist for Richard’s Fine Whines, a daycare center. Basically, the job title tells us about 99% of what we need to know. You really don’t need to tell us that you also organized the office supplies room, reordered the Pampers, and kept call logs and made travel plans, blah blah blah. We know that. Even if we didn’t know that, no one is going to hire you because

you organized the office supply room, are they? No, they are not.

Bill Gates is the most accomplished person in America. Here is his resume:

Bill Gates

Co-founder, Microsoft.

That tells you everything you need to know, does it not?

So that brings us to Bob’s First Rule of Writing Resumes That Actually Have a Chance of Getting You Hired: Ask yourself: “Why the heck is that on there? Is that really going to get me hired? If the answer is “no”, then don’t put that on there. People that hire people are more interested in what you can do than in what you did, so, make sure you don’t obscure the big picture by hiding it in 1,000,000 little details.

2. Get over yourself. Overselling is not selling. If you are not the President of the company, don’t try to make your resume read like you are. When I read a resume of an Assistant VP and it is in Full Overblown Mode, I ask myself “If this person is that good, why isn’t he running the company?” Unfortunately, the conclusion is going to be: (a) he isn’t that good, or (b) he’s a megalomaniac, or (c) both.

Don’t list trivial or obscure accomplishments. Trivial and obscure accomplishments make you look like you really have nothing significant to offer. Again, if I can’t understand how that relates to why I should hire you, leave it off.

3. Stay out of the Buzz-O-Sphere. “Thought Leadership” is not a header for a paragraph that I want to read. If you are a “change agent” who “thinks out of the box” and delivers “game-changing” “new paradigms”, I have

to ask myself: Am I looking for a buzzword parrot, or a real person? In the not-huge-corporate-America, those kinds of buzzwords are deadly. In huge-corporate America, and only there, buzzwords are fine – but you must use only the most current buzzwords. Yesterday’s buzzwords are so passé. The Wall Street Journal is a great buzzword resource. Most of the really trendy corporate buzz phrases get launched there or legitimized there. Some clown gets quoted saying that “buying in a bear market is like trying to catch a falling knife” and 20 minutes later 28% of the corporate workforce has managed to work that sassy little gem into their morning wasting-my-time-and-yours-too rituals.

But I digress.

Which brings us to Bob’s Second Rule of Writing Resumes That Actually Have a Chance of Getting You Hired: What you say you ARE can actually tell the reader what you ARE NOT. Saying that you are “creative” and “think outside of the box” is the least creative and the least “outside the box” thing you can do.

4. DO speak to soft skills and cultural fit. It’s better to have this in a narrative of a few sentences rather than in a list of bullet points, and again, shy away from clichés and buzzwords where possible. Help me understand how I can help you succeed. If you are a manager, also help me understand how you help others succeed.

5. Bob’s Third Rule of Writing Resumes That Actually Have a Chance of Getting You Hired: Practice safe submitting. Never use your real name or full contact info when submitting your resume to a non-human.

a. Your resume will live forever in resume databases and on the internet.

b. You may wish to have multiple resumes that are crafted to cast you in a different light as you apply for specific jobs.

c. Your resume’s historical detail may need to change over time.

d. Your present employer may find your resume and fire you.

e. Your identity may be stolen. The two largest resume databases on the web were hacked for personal data.

Here’s what to do: a. Get a new email account at gmail or Hotmail or

whatever. Make sure it contains no personal info. SallySmithDallas3@gmail.com is not what we are looking for, nor is BunnyLover456@hotmail.com. Use something like GST704@hotmail.com, and then never use that address again.

b. Use a fake name. A generic fake name. A fake name that is appropriate for the job type and career level.

c. Make CERTAIN that you monitor that email account.d. Omit your street address, but provide your

City/State/Zip. Do NOT provide a phone number.

When you receive an expression of interest from a REAL HUMAN, then you can say “By the way, for privacy and identity theft reasons, I did not post my real personal data. My name is Sally Smothers and my phone number is 564-888-9999.

Also, and this is sad but true: Names that are perceived to be made-up African-heritage given names are to be avoided, because studies have shown that Lakieshequia is 70% less likely to get called for an interview than Sally. Fair? Absolutely not. But the point here is to deal with the reality. When you make up a name, make it generic. One day soon, we all hope,

this silent discrimination will go away. Until then, get around it by using a generic fake name (until contacted by a human).

Here is the link to one such Harvard study: http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf

Here is the summary:

We study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers.

To manipulate perceived race, resumes are randomly assigned African American or White sounding names.

White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews.

Callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for White names than for African American ones.

The racial gap is uniform across occupation, industry, and employer size.

We also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names.

Differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the U.S. labor market.

6. Bob’s Fourth Rule of Writing Resumes That Actually Have a Chance of Getting You Hired. Always make sur that the speling and grammer are purfect. Recruiters will often rewrite your resume to correct such errors, but corporate hiring managers will not. Bad spelling and bad grammar are The Kiss of Death. This is true at every career level. How do you expect to get hired for a clerical or admin job when your resume says that you are “Detailed orientated”?

Have someone else, preferably someone who always annoys you by correcting your speech, proofread your resume.

7. Always make sure your resume is understandable by automated resume-processing systems. This can be a separate version that you use just for online uploads. Bob has a separate memo for how to do that, written in the same smart-aleck tone, so you may want to wait a day or two before you tackle that meal. That memo follows on the next pages.

Tips for Electronic Resumes

How to Ensure that Automated Recruiting Software Can Read Your ResumeCopyright © 2007-2008 Sovren Group, Inc. All rights reserved.

Your resume will not be read by a human until after it is read, parsed, and classified by a computer – and even then it will only be read by a human if it is a good search match. It won’t matter at all how pretty your painted Easter egg looks to a human, if it looks like scrambled eggs to a computer. And if it looks like scrambled eggs, it’s not likely to get any search “hits”.

Sovren Group has over 10 years of experience in providing software to automatically understand and classify all data contained within resumes. Our software is used by many if not most of the largest job boards and resume processing organizations in the world. Unfortunately, many professional resume writers neither know nor understand the importance of making sure that your resume will be understood by electronic processing software (a.k.a. resume parsing or resume extraction). Ignore these people unless you are paying them to write/rewrite your resume, in which case you should (a) insist that they read and follow the guidelines in this memo, and (b) charge them $500 for the education.

Computers do not appreciate style or cleverness. Quirky, clever resumes will not be processed correctly by resume software and they will therefore end up in a cold dark place where no one can hear you scream.

But wait! Don’t recruiters want to see very nicely formatted resumes with lots of “power touches”? YES, they do! But the problem is that, unless you are sending your resume directly to a recruiter, you need to send in a resume that is oriented toward automated parsing and searching and matching. That way a recruiter WILL find you, and contact you, and at that point you can send the “looks cool and powerful” version. If that makes you nervous, just add a line at the bottom of your resume that says something like “This resume was optimized for automated systems. Please contact me directly for a visually appealing resume.”

So, we are going to have two versions of our resume: one for sending directly to a human being, and one for sending everywhere else (job board, corporate application portal, etc.). Everything that follows is about the resume that gets sent to non-humans.

The rules for computers are really simple when you remember that computers are not clever. They are like the really smart nerd in your

high school History class – big on facts, clueless on how they all fit together and what they all mean. So, let’s make it easy for the computer to like you, ok?

DISCLAIMER: many of the “don’ts” in this memo are actually NOT a problem for the Sovren Resume Parser, but we’re not the only vendor out there, and in any case, why take chances? Let’s practice “safe submitting”…

Here are the rules:

1. Your resume must be in Microsoft™ Word format.

Do not save your resume as HTML, PDF, WordPerfect or RTF. Especially not PDF. Never use PDF for your resume. Read that again: never use PDF for your resume. And do not use Microsoft Works or WordPad unless you save the files as “text”.

Recruiters want resumes in Microsoft Word. Many resume systems cannot convert PDF, HTML, Open Office or WordPerfect resumes and will discard them. If you do not want to use Microsoft Word, do NOT use RTF, use “Text” instead. Save your resume as a plain text file, with a .txt extension.

Do not use the new MS Word 2007 .DOCX format, at least not until the year 2011. The old MS Word format is universal; the new .DOCX format is not. Do not save MS Word documents with the DOCX extension (Word 2007 and later do that by default). Use File => Save As => “.doc” instead.

Do not use PDF. The PDF standard is a “broken” standard. Text cannot be correctly extracted from MANY, MANY PDF files. As a result, if you use a PDF resume, there is a non-trivial chance that your resume will be unusable.

2. Looks are deceiving.

Plain is good. Fancy is bad. Therefore:

a. Do not use document Headers or Footers. Do not put anything into Headers or Footers.

Many resume software programs cannot read information in headers. If you put your contact information into a header, it may never get read by the software, and your resume will not contain information about who you are and how you can be reached. And that’s a bad thing.

Headers and Footers also present another serious problem. The problem with footers is that when the computer reads your resume, the footer data gets inserted into the middle of whatever text spans the two pages. That means that the footer text may be inserted as garbage into critical parts of your resume.

If you think about it, Headers and Footers are really a throwback to the days of paper resumes and black and white televisions. The purpose of Headers and Footers on a paper resume was to make sure that a recruiter always could put the pages together in order, and to make it obvious that there were supposed to be X number of pages. But that concept is completely unnecessary for electronic documents, isn’t it? Unnecessary, and in the case of resumes, harmful.

b. Do not use graphics.

At best, graphics (clip art, photos, logos, anything that is a .bmp or .gif or .jpg or .png, etc.) will be ignored.

At worst, the graphics will be turned into a huge mass of garbage characters, like this:

shppict{\pict\picscalex81\picscaley81\piccropl0\piccropr0\piccropt0\piccropb0\picw7407\pich2408\picwgoal4199\pichgoal1365\wmetafile8\bliptag159028895\blipupi96{\*\blipuid 097a969f0002499996eb8b27309a3c5c}\bin12896 333333333333333333333333333333333331 #! 3 333333! #3332 33331 #3331 #! 3 33333333333! 3! 3333! 1 #332 2 3332 ! 3333! 2 3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333331 ! " 3332 ! #3331 33331 #3331 "! " 33333333333! " 3333! ! #332 2 3332 ! 3333! " 3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333331 3332 #333! 1 3331 #3331 333333333331 3333! #332 3332 ! 3333! 3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333331 3332 3332 3 3331 #3331 333333333333 3333! #333! #3332 ! 3333! 333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333

More likely, the graphics will cause some garbage characters to appear, and will mess up the line spacing,

paragraphing, etc. So, your contact information may get distorted or your name may get lost.

This brings up another equally important admonition: DO NOT GET FANCY! Do not write your name in small caps like e.e. cummins. Do not write your name with expanded text, like R O B E R T G A R N E R. Do not use pictures or graphics to convey any textual information. If you are a graphic artist or other artistic type, you will definitely need to have your electronic resume created by a non-creative type because we both know you are completely unable to resist the temptation to go all artsy-fartsy and create a resume that will be useless to any non-human. Yes, you want to keep the stunning visual gem of a resume that you created, but remember that it is for direct human consumption and not for submission to an automatic resume processing process.

c. Do not use “tables” in Microsoft Word™.

Tables are neat and pretty. To humans. Unfortunately, some resume conversion software cannot handle tables and will either scramble the text into an undecipherable mess, or it will space the data with extra lines that may confuse the software. Or, worst of all, all the data in the leftmost column will appear at the top of the converted resume. So this:

1999-2007 Manager, Smith Corp.1995-1999 Assistant Vice President, NotSmith

Corp.1990-1995 Officer, Big Bank

will become this:

1999-20071995-19991990-1995Manager, Smith Corp.Assistant Vice President, NotSmith Corp.Officer, Big Bank

d. Do not use “fields” in Microsoft Word.

Most resume conversion software cannot read anything contained in “fields”. So we don’t want to use “fields”, do we? If you do not know what a “field” is in Microsoft Word, don’t worry, you are safe.

e. DO NOT USE ANY RESUME TEMPLATE, ESPECIALLY ANY RESUME TEMPLATE FROM MICROSOFT. Virtually all resume templates contain severe flaws such as tables (see “c.” above) that will render your resume an undecipherable mess.

3. Never mix different font types or font sizes for data.

WRONG:

Jeff Perry

Never use small caps for lowercase letters. In Microsoft Word™, it is easy to do this by selecting “small caps” from the Format => Fonts menu. Do NOT do that.

WRONG:JEFF FERRY

And, never use E X P A N D E D S T Y L E S for anything, unless you want it to be a secret.

Do not use WingDings or other clever symbols. For instance, most document converters convert this:

phil@aol.com

as this:

, phil@aol.com

4. Capitalization does matter.

Do not use all caps unless there is a good reason to do so. A good reason to do so is when writing the section headers. A bad reason to do so is when writing a job title. And, unless you are e.e. cummings, it’s best to go ahead and capitalize your name, your employer, etc. [e.e. cummings could get away with that because he was a poet and his resume was submitted as a poem rather than a traditional resume.]

5. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: Change the font size to 8 point or less and see if it still reads correctly. Now, save your resume as plain text (“.txt”), and see if it still reads correctly.

Resume systems do NOT read resumes directly. They first convert the resumes into plain text, and then they read and process that plain text. So, ALWAYS make sure that you save a copy of your resume as plain text and then open that plain text and make sure that it still reads like it should, with no funky formatting problems. You may be surprised….

6. Contact info comes first.

If you want a job, put your contact info FIRST. That’s “first” as in “first”, not “first” as in “right after the pretty logo”.

Contact info should never be placed on just one or two lines.

WRONG:

Robert H. Smith • 13003 Myrtlea Lane • Houston, Texas 77099 • 713.562.7009

RIGHT:

Robert H. Smith13003 Myrtlea LaneHouston, Texas 77099713-562-7009smith@anvilsAndHammers.com

NEVER PUT CONTACT INFO INTO COLUMNS!

WRONG:

Robert H. Smith 713-562-700913003 Myrtlea Lane smith@anvilsAndHammers.comHouston, Texas 77099

And don’t put in multiple addresses. No one cares. No one is going to SNAIL MAIL you about your resume. Leave off the second address.

7. Use common header terms to start resume sections, and put them on separate lines.

There is one exception to this rule: contact info. Contact info does not need a header. Everything else gets a header.

Your job objective section should start with a header that says

JOB OBJECTIVE

Your Work History section should start with a header that says

WORK EXPERIENCE

Your education section should start with a header that says

EDUCATION

If you went to college, omit your High School data -- and regardless of your education level, telling us about your Junior High experience is always a bad idea.

IMPORTANT: Do not use strange, unusual, or overly long headers. For instance, never use a header like “COMMUNITY INFUSION”. Is that a new type of instant coffee, or is it something important?

8. Do not use “columns” or “tables” for formatting anything. (related to 2. c. above, but important enough that it deserves a second treatment)

NEVER use columns or tables to format your education or work history or any other important piece of data on your resume. (And by the way, if it’s not important, it should not be on your resume.)

WRONG:

Jan. 2003 – Present Superb Products, Inc. Parts Manager.

Reduced parts inventory by 10% while eliminating most out-of-stocks.

Mar. 2000 – Dec. 2002 Doug’s Truck Sales, Inc. Repairman.

Fixed trucks and managed the parts inventory.

Here’s how the computer may read that:

Jan. 2003 – PresentMar. 2000 – Dec. 2002Superb Products, Inc. Parts Manager.Reduced parts inventory by 10% while eliminating most out-of-stocks.Dougs Truck Sales, Inc. Repairman.Fixed trucks and managed the parts inventory.

RIGHT: (uses tabs instead of columns or tables):

Jan. 2003 – PresentSuperb Products, Inc. Parts Manager.Reduced parts inventory by 10% while eliminating most out-of-stocks.

Mar. 2000 – Dec. 2002Dougs Truck Sales, Inc. Repairman.Fixed trucks and managed the parts inventory.

And never, ever use newspaper column format, like this:

WRONG:

REFERENCESBill Smith Jane DoughCustomer Service Manager Store ManagerDillard’s Department Stores Fredo’s Groceries, Inc.713-888-0998 765-999-9988

RIGHT:

REFERENCES

Bill SmithCustomer Service ManagerDillard’s Department Stores713-888-0998

Jane DoughStore ManagerFredo’s Groceries, Inc.765-999-9988

9. Keep like data in like order.

Each job that you list should be described in the same order. If one job is described as…

[Dates] [Position title] [Company][City], [State] [Description]

… then all of the other jobs should be written in the same style.

10. Do not combine sections.

Never combine several topics or sections into a single section. This is really important!

WRONG: PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS, COMMUNITY SERVICE, AWARDS, TRAINING

RIGHT: PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONSI was involved with….

COMMUNITY SERVICEChairman, United Way Campaign for Greater Okowekofobee County. My main duties were to make low level employees feel that they had to

give to the charity of their employer’s choice (United Way), unless of course they were ready to quit anyway, and setting coercive goals like “100% Participation” to really drive that point home.

AWARDSPresident’s Quarterly Salesman Ship Award, 2004. I received this award for cleaning the boss’s Salesman Ship better than anyone else.

TRAININGYMCA CPR Training for Frogs and Small Reptiles, Level I, 2002

11. Always end company names with common company name words.

You know that J.M. Huber is an employer company name. Unfortunately, the computer probably does not know that. The solution is to always end a company name with a company word like “Inc.” or “Co.” or “Company” or “LLC” or “LLP” or “GmbH”. So, write J.M. Huber as J.M. Huber, Inc. or J.M. Huber Co. You are not applying for a job at J.M. Huber, so they will not care.

And yes, this rule applies to big companies as well as little companies. If you worked for IBM, write IBM, Inc. “Procter & Gamble” should be written as Procter & Gamble, Inc. “Enron” should be written as Enron, Inc. (or better yet, as “Major Energy Trading Company” ).

12. Use blank lines between sections/paragraphs, but do not use blank lines within paragraphs.

Always separate each Work History job and each Education school record with a blank line, and do not put blank lines within logical paragraphs. “Blank line” means an actual blank line placed there by your word processor program, not just visual spacing that looks like a blank line but really is not. Also, never use tables or the space bar to move to the next line. Always use the Enter key.

WRONG:

Systems Integrator / Senior Systems Administrator (Contract)

May 02 – Jun 02Ablest TechnologiesIntegrated Criminal Justice Info Systems, Maricopa County AZ

Provided Enterprise Systems Security and Audit needs analysis, methodology, education, product research and recommendations for Department of Public Safety, ICJIS, and Homeland Security.

Systems Integrator / Senior Systems Administrator (Contract) Nov 01 – Mar 02SRA InternationalInternal Revenue Service, Enterprise Systems Management Center, Austin TX & Washington DCProvided security process and methodology, product analysis, and product implementation to comply with Treasury and IRS data security policies.

RIGHT:

Systems Integrator / Senior Systems Administrator (Contract)May 02 – Jun 02Ablest TechnologiesIntegrated Criminal Justice Info Systems, Maricopa County AZProvided Enterprise Systems Security and Audit needs analysis, methodology, education, product research and recommendations for Department of Public Safety, ICJIS, and Homeland Security.

Systems Integrator / Senior Systems Administrator (Contract)Nov 01 – Mar 02SRA InternationalInternal Revenue Service, Enterprise Systems Management Center, Austin TX & Washington DCProvided security process and methodology, product analysis, and product implementation to comply with Treasury and IRS data security policies.

13. Omit page numbers.

Page numbers will probably show up as garbage text in your resume, right in the middle of important data. The computer does not need page numbers. People that read your resume do not need page numbers. Your resume does not need page numbers, either. Your electronic resume is not going to blow off the desk and scatter into disordered pages on the floor.

Here’s a typical way that page numbers look in your resume after it is converted (bold added for emphasis):

May 02 – Jun 02Ablest TechnologiesIntegrated Criminal Justice Info Systems, Maricopa County AZProvided Enterprise Systems Security and Audit needs analysis,

Bob Smith resume (2007 version1) – page two

methodology, education, product research and recommendations for Department of Public Safety, ICJIS, and Homeland Security. Systems Integrator / Senior Systems Administrator (Contract)

See how your name pops up inside the job paragraph? Don’t do that.

14. Put skills into Work History descriptions.

Why? Because really good resume systems can actually match your skills to the job dates and compute your total years of experience for each skill and the date that you last used each skill, and that is extremely important information. Should you put your skills into a separate SKILLS section? Sure, if you want to. But even if you do, make sure that you also put those same skills into the individual job position history descriptions.

NOTE: Do NOT put skills in work history sections under separate headers inside each job. Just list the skills as part of the narrative. So, do not do this:

May 02 – Jun 02Ablest TechnologiesIntegrated Criminal Justice Info Systems, Maricopa County AZSystems Integrator / Senior Systems Administrator (Contract)

Provided Enterprise Systems Security and Audit needs analysis, methodology, education, product research and recommendations for Department of Public Safety, ICJIS, and Homeland Security.

Achievements: blah blah blah BADSkills: blah blah blah BADSoftware: blah blah blah BAD

15. Never omit dates on your work history! EVER!

A resume that omits dates of jobs held is NOT going to get you hired. That type of resume is called a functional resume, and functional resumes have a very bad reputation in the recruiting community, because they are usually designed that way in order to hide things. Bad things as in you were unemployed for two years, or as in you’ve been a Sales Manager for 10 years, but that was actually at 6 companies over a 12 year period.

Resumes that do not have dates associated with work history will NOT get you hired.

Do NOT omit the start or end date of the most current job. For instance:

WRONG:

May 00 –Ablest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ

WRONG:

Since May 2003 Ablest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ

RIGHT:

May 2000 – PresentAblest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ

Do not use all-number dates. Resumes may be processed in locales that differ from the locale that the resume was written in. In the US, 06/07 means June of 2007, but in many locales, it means July of 06. So, avoid all-number dates and use written months and four-digit years.

WRONG:

05/06 - PresentAblest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ

RIGHT:

May 2006 – PresentAblest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ

Do not use unusual terms as substitutes for “current” or “present”.

WRONG:

Since 2005 Ablest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ

RIGHT:

2005 – PresentAblest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ

16. Do not nest data or omit company names on consecutive

positions.

If you held three different positions for ABC Company, treat each position as if were a separate, standalone position.

WRONG:

May 2000 – PresentAblest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ Dec 04 - PresentSystems Integrator / Senior Systems AdministratorProvided data integration services, blah, blah, blah.

Nov 1998 – May 2000Programmer/AnalystWrote code, blah, blah, blah. I started with the company as a Junior Fall Guy. In Nov 03, I was promoted to Programmer/Analyst..

RIGHT:

May 2000 – PresentAblest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ Dec 04 - PresentSystems Integrator / Senior Systems AdministratorProvided data integration services, blah, blah, blah.

Nov 1998 – May 2000Ablest Technologies, Maricopa County AZ Include thisProgrammer/AnalystWrote code, blah, blah, blah. I started with the company as a Junior Fall Guy. In Nov 03, I sprang forward and was promoted to Programmer/Analyst.

17. Do not put any explanatory or descriptive text until AFTER you have set forth ALL the basic facts.

WRONG:

May 00 – Nov 03Plaza Technology Solutions, LLC.Plaza is a $500 million VC-funded venture that provides best of breed accounting and POS solutions directly to companies who sell snow cones. PTS received its second round of capital in March of this year. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.As Chief Technology Officer of PTS, I was responsible for ensuring that no snow cone was left behind.

RIGHT:

May 00 – Nov 03Chief Technology Officer, Plaza Technology Solutions, LLC.As CTO of PTS, I was responsible for ensuring that no snow cone was left behind. Plaza is a $500 million VC-funded venture that provides best of breed accounting and POS solutions directly to companies who sell snow cones. PTS received its second round of capital in March of this year.

18. Do not put employer street addresses, or supervisor or reference information, into your work history. Put the city and state after the employer name, but NEVER put any other employer info (such as street address, postal code, phone numbers, supervisor names, etc.). That level of detail should be reserved for references.

WRONG:

May 00 – Nov 03Chief Technology Officer, Plaza Technology Solutions, LLC., 2000 S Dairy Ashford, Suite 425, Houston, Texas 77077 USA. Supervisor: Mary Collins, 276-098-8765. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

RIGHT:

May 00 – Nov 03Chief Technology Officer, Plaza Technology Solutions, LLC.As CTO of PTS, I was responsible for ensuring that no snow cone was left behind. Plaza is a $500 million VC-funded venture that provides best of breed accounting and POS solutions directly to companies who sell snow cones. PTS received its second round of capital in March of this year.

19. Do not put references on your resume.

DON’T DO IT! References are unnecessary unless asked for by a HUMAN. Why?

Because if someone wants to hire you, they will ask you at that time to submit references.

Because they will call your previous employers and check references regardless of whether you gave them.

Because it is rude to the people who are your references to send their contact information to 10,000 places.

Because they raise the chance that your own contact info will be confused with that of one of your references.

Because your resume will live in data banks and the internet until long after you have retired, and your references may go stale long before then.

If you want, you may simply state, as the last line of your resume, “References available on request.” And if you really, really want, send a separate references document. But in any case, only send references to a HUMAN, never to a machine.

About Sovren

Sovren Group develops and markets the enterprise-class, multilingual Sovren Resume/CV Parser, the Sovren Job Parser, and the Sovren Semantic Matching Engine to job boards, ATS vendors, HCM vendors, staffing firms, and corporate HR departments worldwide.

Find us on the web at http://sovren.com.

Sovren was founded in 1996.