Nov 04 2007
Too Many Resumes, Too Many Mistakes
As Head of Information Services at a medium-sized public library, I have received many resumes over the years, and have interviewed and recommended hiring several staff members. I have not been impressed by resumes with:
- typos
- line spacing issues
- fancy fonts
- hybrid resumes/cover letters
- no cover letters
- handwritten envelopes
- no logical timeline
- too much life history
Resumes, whether printed or e-mailed, remain an important part of the job-hunting process. A potential new staff member, whether applying for a librarian or paraprofessional position, needs to invest the time and effort into making their resume into a spectacular publicity tool for their career.
Covering your cover letter
Most problems in cover letters can be fixed by taking the time to proofread your document and by avoiding the artificial informality encouraged by the Internet. I have read cover letters by candidates that are so informal I think they have been written by my best friend. Potential employers don’t know you, and you are never on a first name basis, whether your cover letter is sent by e-mail or via the post office.
Proofread your cover letter before sending it, and don’t write as if you and your potential employer are speaking on the phone or chatting online. Cover letters demand the same kind of attention as your resume; they serve as your introduction to the employer. Don’t forget to send one! Even if you apply for a job via e-mail and attach your resume, you cannot skip the cover letter. I have also seen letters where candidates try to incorporate their resume into the cover letter itself. This is very confusing, and makes me want to skip to the next resume.
Rethinking your resume
Important decisions are made with your resume in hand. Most employers receive multiple resumes — how have you made yours stand out? A friend recalls sitting down for an interview with a prospective employer who knocked over a cup of coffee onto a stack of resumes. He shrugged his shoulders, and continued to conduct the interview. In person, a candidate has a brief moment to capture the employer’s attention.
On your resume, your name should be clear and in a boldface font at the top of the page. Once you capture the employer’s attention, you don’t want them to forget your name. I have seen resumes with names the same size as the rest. Why? You want your name to be as prominent as possible.
I have seen resumes go over to the next page unnecessarily, with just one line on page two. Remember to check your margins and spacing. Keep your focus on the content of your resume. Why list your job experience back 25 years? I was advised by one career counselor to keep my resume to the last 7-10 years of experience. Things change quickly these days, and I want to know how current you are, not what you did back in 1974.
I have also seen many resumes lacking an objective statement. Yes, these are painful to write, but they provide a central statement for your career. After looking at a name and contact information, I often scan the page curious to read the objective statement — and laugh when I see that it has been written to exactly match my job description. So much for originality!
A candidate should think about the available job opening. Why do they want it, and how does his or her experience matches what the advertisement says the library is looking for? I once placed a local advertisement for a librarian. (My own fault lay in that I did not specify the need for an MLS degree, but assumed that prospective candidates knew what you needed to become a librarian.) I received one resume from a woman who had been an assistant to an Italian socialite, with no mention of any library experience, and also had a personal trainer call up about the job. The lesson for me was to specify requirements in all job ads — but a lesson for all should be to do some research before submitting your resume.
Answering the questions
Your submitted information should answer who, what, why, where, when, and how questions. We recently received an extensive resume with a comprehensive job history. Since the candidate failed to include job titles, and many of the jobs had been part-time, we questioned why she had held so many jobs in such a short time span. There is a fine line between too many and too few details. Have a friend whose opinion you trust read your resume and give feedback. Read the document out loud to yourself to “hear” how it sounds.
In my 14 years as a librarian, I’ve also noticed an obvious lack of proofreading on many resumes. Before typing in the e-mail address for human resources and hitting send, send your resume to yourself first. You will see how it looks, and perhaps catch an error you did not see while working on it in your word processing program. People don’t realize that e-mail does impact margins and spacing, and that you do have the option to save the document as a text only file. The bottom line? Take a closer look. Make sure all your sentences end with a period. Check your margins so all the words line up correctly and there is not a zig-zag of words down the middle of the page. Have that trusted friends or colleague read your resume to look for errors or to help you include more specific details.
Your resume should reflect your strengths and experience in the field, and I cringe when I receive resumes that show lackadaisical effort. The Internet helps us communicate, but we need to remain professional in our dealings with potential employers — especially when it comes to our resumes.
Nancy Larrabee has been the Head of Information Services at the Greenburgh Public Library, Elmsford, NY since 2001, and has worked at Greenburgh in various librarian capacities since 1994