If you’ve made a resume before, you know it’s not easy to give out your personality in a two-page document. Impressing someone in bullet points isn’t really an easy skill. So what do you do? You put in all your creativity in the summary section, hoping your resume catches the fancy of the evaluator and you get handpicked for the interview.
Avoid clichés
But this is where everything goes wrong. Because everybody looks to impress their prospective employer with flowery languages, they end up using such clichés that reading them one more time will have the employers roll their eyes.
And this document is what gives out the first impression of you to your hiring manager. Quoting The Muse’s article, Mashable listed out three commonly used phrases that you must avoid at all costs. And what you should use instead. Here they are:
Big picture thinker or out-of-the-box thinker : Of course not everyone can think ‘outside the box’. But the phrase is so overused that it doesn’t come across as impressive anymore. As Muse writer Sara McCord says, “Seriously, though, if you are someone who thinks outside the box, why not do just that...” Food for thought, eh?
What you could do, is give instances where you ideas were indeed out of the ordinary, and worked well.
Thought leader or inspirational leader : If self-proclamation made people managers, then we would have a world filled with people who (supposedly) have leadership skills. Here’s the thing — when you’re a leader, other people give testimonies about your skills. It’s not something you can say for yourself.
To subtly showcase that you are a leader, maybe pen down the times that you led a team, when you eased transitions in companies, etc.
Innovative or visionary : This one’s as bad as ‘passionate’ — it’s thrown around so much that it doesn’t mean anything anymore.
So what can you do? Showcase! Maybe start a point with ‘Invented’ or ‘Created new’. This will have a better, lasting impression than proclaiming yourself to be a visionary.
To read the full story, click here .