Building and submitting a precise resume is crucial. It serves as your initial introduction to potential employers. Every detail of your resume should be meticulously crafted to showcase your skills and achievements in the best possible light. This document is your ticket to the next step in your career and you want it to reflect your skills and accomplishments in the best light. Despite spending hours refining and perfecting it, a former Google recruiter suggests that simplicity holds greater importance than merely standing out.
Stefanie Fackrell, with over 15 years of experience recruiting for top tech companies like Google, Apple, Samsung and Nvidia, has reviewed countless resumes. She has seen a wide variety, from the simplest formats to the most elaborate designs. With all this experience, she suggests that one should keep their resume classic. This is the best approach. In an interview with CNBC Make It, she mentioned, “Make it boring.” This might sound strange at first, but there’s a reason behind it. Fackrell advises not to use using colours, charts, graphs or pictures on resumes. Instead, she recommends keeping the format clean and straightforward. It should also focus on your achievements.
“When I worked at Google, I saw a lot of artistic resumes with charts and Google colours,” Fackrell said.
“Instead of writing a list of titles and accomplishments, they’d split their resume into columns and quadrants. By creating these colourful resumes, you’re just being a little gimmicky. Some of these resumes are also not easily readable, which makes the applicants’ qualifications harder to discern,” she adds.
Fackrell further explained that an ideal resume should be like a snapshot of your professional life, presented in a clear and concise manner. “A resume is showing you in a 10-to-60-second format on paper,” she said. “It’s important to tell a compelling story through your resume, making sure it is clear and to the point. While listing your accomplishments is crucial, the resume should not be more than two pages long,” she said.
Another common mistake that Fackrell pointed out is listing daily tasks on a resume. Many people fall into the trap of describing their day-to-day responsibilities instead of highlighting their achievements. She stresses that a resume filled with daily duties without the mention of significant accomplishments can raise concerns about your impact and effort.
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