spooky

In honor of spooky season, here are some creepers you don't want crawling into your resume.

AHHH, Typos! 

There is truly nothing more frightening than a misspelled word (or words) in a resume. This may seem like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many CVs are floating around inboxes with easily fixable errors like missing periods, inaccurate capitalization or the wrong use of there, their and they’re. Not doing one last proofread of a document could kill your application process before it even begins. 

Attack of the Huge Chunks of Texts

Nothing makes an employer's eyes glaze over like a zombie quicker than a long, pointless paragraph. Resumes are meant to share key facts, not fill space. The less words you can use to get your point across, the better. We don’t need your memoir, just the Sparknotes. 

The Nightmare of the Irregular Formatting

Multiple font sizes, margins and line spacing are the easiest ways to say, “I’m frighteningly unequipped for your open position.” It’s like you’re screaming at the reader “Hey! I can’t make a decision! Please help!” When you’re finished with a draft, print it out and give it a look from afar. Does it look good? Bad? Ugly? If it’s either of the latter, do a revamp.

Graphics & Pictures & Funky Fonts, oh my! 

Just like that one monster that lives under your bed, these details make a resume truly spooky. A “Hire Me” graphic is distracting. A headshot wastes space. And an extravagant font is just plain hard to read. None of these things will impress anyone. If anything, they will get in the way of showcasing your talents, creating a big bad barrier between you and the job you want. 

Beware the Irrelevant Information 

The hiring manager at the local cancer foundation probably doesn’t care about the one summer you spent working at the snack bar of the local pool, regardless of how many times you told that one kid to reapply his sunscreen. Resumes should only include job experience that directly relates to the job at hand. Like maybe the time you volunteered at the nearby hospital or when you took on a leadership role for a charity’s fundraising event. You want to entice employers with your work experience, not spook them with information that doesn’t apply. 

No Escape from Lies, Lies, Lies 

Sure, it’s tempting to buff up a few lines of your resume to appear more impressive. Maybe something about rescuing a litter of kittens from a burning building. Starting an orphanage at age 13. Being a six-time kidney donor. It’s not hard to sniff out a fib, and one lie can stick a permanent red flag into your professional reputation. Turning what began as an application for a dream job into a waking nightmare. No one wants to be an unhirable ghost goblin, so stick to the facts.