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5 out of 500 Resumes Hit the Mark

As I was going through a stack of resumes I had saved from the past year, 500+ of them to be exact, I could only find 5 that were noteworthy. What do I mean by noteworthy? The summary actually told me something about the person.

Liz Ryan's post from the other day cited these resume killing phrases. (FYI, these were the most commonly re-occuring phrases on the 500+ resumes)

"Here are the worst 10 boilerplate phrases -- the ones to seek out and destroy in your resume as soon as possible:

Results-oriented professional
Cross-functional teams
More than [x] years of progressively responsible experience
Superior (or excellent) communication skills
Strong work ethic
Met or exceeded expectations
Proven track record of success
Works well with all levels of staff
Team player
Bottom-line orientation"
So grab a red pen, a thesaurus and your accomplishments to build a better summary, one that will jump out of the stack!

Want to see the 5 that made it? Read more

Tags: best, help, improve, phrases, resume

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Comment by Hannah Morgan on July 30, 2009 at 5:20am: Greg, that's a great way to filter out junk! Thanks for sharing. So using that logic "extensivie experience" would become "absolutely no experience", right? Thanks for the comment!

Comment by Greg Lachs on July 29, 2009 at 10:34pm: I used to talk to my students about what I called the rule of "opposites." Essentially, if you could easily come up with the opposite of what you'd written, what you'd put in your resume had no value. For example, "Team player" would become "Don't work well with others," and "Strong Work Ethic" would turn into "Goofs Off at Every Opportunity" - so, it's just fluff. And phrases to avoid.