Resume advice often focuses on what you should include in the document, but it is equally important to consider the things you should not include. Unnecessary information takes up valuable space and distracts hiring managers from the most important information they need to make a decision about interviewing you. Here are three things you should remove from your resume immediately to make it more effective.
Salary History and Wage Information
While you might think it’s helpful to include previous salary in your resume, it can actually backfire on you. Including salary and wage information could price you out of a job or it could lay the foundation for a lowball offer.
Currently, there is a movement among some politicians to bar employers from asking about salary history and there are nine cities in the US that currently prohibit the practice. If you don’t live in one of those nine areas, do yourself a favor and keep salary information off of your resume.
Irrelevant Experience And Information
When you’re first starting your engineering career, it stands to reason that you’d include previous jobs that might not be relevant to what you’re doing today, high school information or college information. However, if you’ve been working for a few years, irrelevant experience and information are only taking up valuable real estate on your resume, making it too long, and it can open you up to age discrimination.
If you’ve been working for two or more years, you can remove high school GPA, clubs, etc. from your resume. If you’ve been working for five or more years, you can start paring down irrelevant college information. If you’re a seasoned professional, you can limit your work history to the past 10 years and you can feel free to remove outdated or obsolete technical skills.
Formatting Issues
When it comes to your resume, less is definitely more. It should be clean, well-organized, concise and easy to scan. Do not be tempted to use colors, illustrations, elaborate designs, unconventional formats, charts or graphs.
First and foremost, unconventional formatting confuses electronic applicant screening programs and can get you immediately rejected. Weird formatting also can annoy recruiters who need to be able to skim your resume quickly for specific information. If you want to show your design skills and creativity, do so in your portfolio, not on your resume.
Are You Looking For Engineering Jobs?
If you are a professional looking for engineering jobs in the Southeast, contact the engineering recruiting experts at Selectek today. We can match you with opportunities that align with your skills and your career goals.
