📜 Avoid These Resume Mistakes

Hello, Connectors 😎

Today in 5 minutes or less, you’ll learn 8 critical do’s and don’ts for crafting a resume that stands out.

Plus, the best links and resources on remote work. You'll learn:

• 🇲🇽 11 years, 60 countries later, Mexico it is

• 🔨 Is it legal to lay off remote workers first?

• 👀 How to convince your boss to let you go remote

Let’s jump in:

📜 Avoid These Resume Mistakes

“I hired a resume service to rewrite my resume. I paid $600.” 

“Were you happy with it?” I asked.

“I wasn’t. And it hasn’t generated more leads.” 

My stomach dropped.

I believe investing in yourself and your career is one of the best investments you can make. But if you’re not happy with the result, it feels awful. It feels like someone took advantage of you at your weakest moment.

One of my biggest problems with these resume rewrite services is they focus on optimizing a resume. They’re trying to take the resume from 80% —> 100%. 

But what many resumes need at the start is resume narrative work. That means trying to get the resume from 50% → 80% first…

And once it’s at 80%, then you optimize.

Here are 8 Do’s and Don’ts to get your resume to 80%:

1/ Start with clean formatting

Do this

What works:

• One column

• H2 headers

• Plain bullets

When parsed by an ATS, it’ll “read” this resume properly.

Not that

1. Don’t use multiple columns (or tables)

2. Don’t get fancy with bullets

An ATS may not parse this correctly. Plus, the human eye needs to “work” to find the information it’s looking for. 

2/ The summary should summarize

Do this

Not that

3/ Quantify your impact

Here are the three easiest ways to quantify your impact: 

• How many people affected

• How much money earned

• How much time saved 

Quantifying your impact is how you demonstrate what you did versus just regurgitating a your job description.

Do this

Not that

4/ Exclude common skills and technologies unless relevant

Only include skills and technologies that are highly relevant or technical.

I’ve seen too many people pad their resumes with commonplace skills. This does more harm than good.

If you’ve worked for any digital company, the MS suite (Excel, Word, PowerPoint) is a given. 

If you have product management experience, Jira, Confluence, Asana, etc. are a given. 

(If you have not worked with those specific tools, it’s assumed you’ll figure out whatever the tech stack is.)

Do this

Not that

5/ Clarity > Historical accuracy 

Your career progression should make intuitive sense. This is your resume, not your autobiography. It’s OK to be flexible with the timing to keep the narrative clean. 

(In case it needs to be said: it’s never OK to make stuff up.) 

Do this

Not that

6/ Use the right titles

Titles are fungible.

If your official title is Digital Operations Specialist but you’re applying for Associate Marketing Manager roles, use that in your resume. If you’re a Customer Champion, use Customer Success Manager. 

Make it easy for yourself, but be ethical.

What do I mean by ethical? 

Do not inflate. If you were a Marketing Manager, don't promote yourself to a Director. If you’re a Senior Product Manager, Growth, don't upgrade yourself to Head of Growth. 

Do this

Technical sales manager, customer success manager, executive assistant

Not that

Technology evangelist, customer happiness rockstar, executive whisperer

7/ Remove fluff 

Here’s how I define fluff: 

• Anyone can say it AND

• You can’t quantify it 

Fluff hurts your resume. It’s better to say less but make every word count than fluff up your resume.

Do this

Not that

8/ Name drop

Name-dropping is a form of social proof. 

Social proof is a mental shortcut. It suggests how you should behave based on the behavior of others.

(This is why you see LinkedIn profiles with ex-Meta, ex-Snap, ex-Google, etc.) 

It signals that “these companies trusted me to operate at this level. So you can trust me, too.”

Name-drop when you can.

Do this

Not that

Conclusion

I’ve seen plenty of resume rewrites yield poor results. 

I want to create a product that gets as good, if not better, results than your average resume rewrite services….

Then give it away for free. 

When I build this out, could I send it to you for feedback? 

Hit reply to this email and let me know if that’d be OK.

That’s a wrap. See you next week 👋

🤝 3 ways I can help you with remote work: