You read that right. Santa. The big guy himself. Reached out and wanted his resume written, by me.
So, I thought I’d show you what he sent, and we could do a little resume review for him.
Don’t worry, Santa gave me permission and wanted everyone to know that while he’s amazing at imbuing the Christmas spirit, resume writing isn’t his strong suit.
Here it is! The resume Santa sent me for an update.
While his resume LOOKS very nice, it isn’t going to get him very far.
The Problems with Santa’s Resume
PROBLEM 1. The Picture
I’m sorry, but we just don’t do pictures on resumes. Not only will they gnarl up your resume when it passes through ATS, but it lends to bias. It is becoming more popular in other parts of the world, but not in America yet.
PROBLEM 2. Two Columns
This is a very popular format available on Word. It is very aesthetically pleasing, too. Unfortunately, it will also jumble up your resume once it goes through ATS. And by jumble up, I mean it smooshes the two columns together. That means it would look like this:
PROFILEEDUCATION
IamtheREALsantaclaus. No really. IBachelorofArtsinBringingJoy
The HR person on the other side isn’t going to find your resume without being to dig out any keywords
PROBLEM 3. Wrong Contact Information
Santa put in the wrong contact information. Take a look. It looks like he put MY information in there. Silly Santa.
PROBLEM 4. Personal Pronouns
It’s best to avoid using personal pronouns, such as I, me, and my because they are implied in a resume. Who else would you be talking about?
PROBLEM 5. Dates in his Education, and Experience
A good rule of thumb is to avoid adding dates older than 10 to 15 years to help prevent ageism.
PROBLEM 6. His Experience is a Wall of Text
Experience is best laid out in bullet points. It creates a staccato of statements for the hiring manager to read and their eyes won’t glaze over trying to keep place of where they were.
PROBLEM 7. Skills Section
The skills section in its entirety is a problem. It’s actually an imported chart from Excel. That’s how the template was made. For the most part, ATS is not able to read imported charts, or really anything heavily graphic laden.
And those are a few of the problems I’ll be helping Santa with so he can get his resume in perfect shape!
Would you like help with your resume? Then. . .
Let’s Connect!
Reach out today: www.resumeassassin.com or mary@resumeassassin.com
Connect on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/mary-southern
Schedule a 15 Minute Call: https://calendly.com/resumeassassin/meet