When it comes to reviewing a resume, former Google recruiter Nolan Church's biggest red flag is wordiness. "The No. 1 thing I don't want to see on a resume is probably text bricks," he says. That is, "endless streams of text that have a lot of words but [not] a lot of content."
These can show up under the bullet points for each job title, for example. While each bullet point should be just one sentence explaining one component of the role, some people will write three to four sentences per bullet, says Church, now the CEO of talent marketplace Continuum. That shows "you have no ability to articulate what you've done quickly," which is critical in this world of constant text communication.
There are other resume red flags that could mean you don't move on in the hiring process, too. Here's what else Church says to avoid.
Grammar mistakes
Church is a stickler for grammar and believes everyone else should be, too.
"It's just too easy to use tools like ChatGPT or Grammarly" to clean up any typos, incorrect punctuation, run-on sentences and so on. Those tools are free and should be applied liberally to make sure your resume is error-free.
Church also thinks humans should be reading your resume. "I fundamentally believe that at least five to 10 people should be giving you feedback," he says. That group should include perceptive people who can spot minor errors.
For Church, a resume with mistakes means you "lack attention to detail," he says. "It's maybe my biggest pet peeve."
Multiple unexplained short stints
Another red flag for Church is "multiple, unexplained short stints," he says. That is, at least two instances in which you were at your given roles for less than a year but aren't providing any explanation why.
There are many reasons people don't stay at a job for more than a year. Maybe your company folded or you ultimately weren't a good fit for the role. Without an explanation of what happened, though, when Church sees a series of these, "the story I tell myself is that you're not committed, long term," he says.
Especially if the reason the job didn't last was out of your control, Church recommends making the last bullet under the job title a short, one-sentence explanation. Something like "left due to reduction in force," he says.
Unexplained breaks between roles
Similarly, unexplained gaps between roles raise some questions for Church. "I actually think breaks are awesome," he says. "But I want to know what you did."
Say you took a yearlong pause between roles to take some classes or travel. Write "career break" as if it was the title of a role wherever that break falls in your timeline, include the time frame of that break, then "give me two to three bullets of what you did," he says.
The idea is to give a sense of how you enriched yourself in your time off. "I strive to work with people that are constantly improving themselves and getting better," he says. So use those bullets to prove that you became better educated about the world or that you improved your skills in some way.
If there's a clear career gap and "you tell me nothing" about why it's there, he says, "I'm going to assume you played video games for three years."
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