As you all know, most of the job application nowadays require candidates to submit their resume. Resume itself is a summary of you and your work experience, usually accompanied by a customized cover letter, and basically has every detail of your professional background and how it’s relevant with the role you’re applying.
Now, if you already know what basic things need to be included in a good resume, then what about the other things that shouldn’t be in there? HubbedIn Singapore rounded up a survey on several recruiters, about what information they think shouldn’t be in a resume but candidates still including it in theirs. According to them, here are the answers.
1. Photograph
Most of job applications don’t require you to submit a photograph of yourself. Unless the job requirements have stated something about physical appearance, it’s no use to submit your picture along with your resume as it won’t be a part of the recruitment evaluation.
2. Birthdate
In many countries, your exact birthdate is a part of personal information, and can be misused by people with bad intentions. Avoid putting your birthdate in any document that you want to share publicly, including a resume. Companies usually not asking about your personal details (e.g., birthdate and age) until later after you got hired and signed a contract or work agreement.
3. Irrelevant Job Experience
Avoid including any job experience that has nothing to do with the job you’re applying. It only makes your resume seems unprofessional.
4. Hobby
Unless it’s being specifically asked on the job requirement, let’s not include any of your personal interest or hobbies in your resume. You may think that this is a common knowledge, but apparently there are many job seekers out there still spare some space on their resume to list in their favourite activities during leisure time.
Avoid that. Just keep it basic and professional.
5. Personal & Political Beliefs
Again, unless it’s being specifically asked, you should avoid including your personal and/or political beliefs in your resume. Your work experience and performance rarely have anything to do with your personal belief and political choice.
6. GPA Scores
In some of the countries, the job application requires you to state your latest GPA. But generally, if you are an experienced worker, you don’t need to keep including GPA scores in your resume. Only including your educational background and what major you were in, is quite sufficient.
7. Social Media Accounts
Your personal social media accounts are not supposed to be listed in your resume. If you are a digital marketer and would like to show the social media engagement performance that you have been working on until now, then you can show them in your portfolios; not in your resume.
8. Skill Rating Scale
Along with the irrelevant job experience, the skill rating scale (or points, or chart, or progress bar) also has been a major issue among the recruiters. They assumed that the candidates measured their performance levels themselves, thus the skill measurement points were not standardized, and therefore meaningless. It’s a bad trend to use this kind of scale to measure your hard skills. Avoid using it at all.
If you want to show your skill in anything, you can include them on the relevant job experience, elaborate a bit about what you did with your skills during those working period.
Those are the 8 things we’d advise you to exclude from your resume. Hopefully it can help you improve your resume quality and have better chances to get it reviewed & processed.
Got Your Resume Right Already? Then Send It to Us!
To accommodate the growing needs of talented tech jobs, HubbedIn Singapore steps in to help creating the process easier and flexible, for both business owners AND job seekers. Our experienced recruiters will scan, identify, and present good candidates to the clients. We’re always looking for efficient ways to help jobseekers to develop their career & to help business owners to grow their organizations.
Feel free to send us your resume to talent@hubbedin.com, and one of our recruiters will get in touch with you. Don’t forget to sign up, and build your own customized landing page for your profile.
