Bad Resumes can haunt you forever, and worse keep you from that new job.
In a dark locked drawer in a black file cabinet in my basement, I keep a collection of the worst resumes in the world. This is where bad resumes go to die.
These bad resumes have a life of their own – a dark personality that reflects a cluttered mind. They cry out for repair.
It is easy to identify a great resume. It pops out of a pile like sunshine. It is orderly with a lovely personality that aches to be read.
But the bad resumes look like tired vegetables; a week old bunch of soft carrots with dried up greens and brown spots. You can barely stand to touch it. It is not worth the energy to toss it in the garbage pile.
A bad resume looks ugly.
It might be a poor copy of a facsimile with a coffee stain on the corner. Sometimes it comes on colored paper with three or four different fonts and maybe just as many font sizes, maybe some odd underlying break in service that doesn’t make sense.
If you look closely at a bad resume you can feel its owner’s despair.
It was sent in a half-hearted attempt to find someone to glance at it. Its owner has probably been out of work a long time, desperate for any kind of job to feed his family.
Most likely you won’t look closely enough to see what its owner wants, his purpose concealed and unintelligible, probably describing a string of meaningless position. This bad resume is a reflection of a careless, disorganized, desperate soul. It does not bring results, just floats around ineffectively.
Don’t waste your time with a bad resume. No one else will. It won’t bring results.
If you haven’t been getting job interviews from your resume submissions, you might be the owner of a bad resume. Take the extra time and make an investment in your resume. Maybe start over.
The best way to start is to download our guide, How to Avoid the Top 5 Mistakes with Resumes, to see how your resume stacks up. Download this and then check your resume against it.
If you have some of these mistakes, then fix it up before you send out another application and resume.