Your Résumé Is Bad. Here Is How to Fix It.
Since my last dispatch, a number of you have written to me, which I appreciate, and several of you attached your résumés, which I do not. I read them anyway, because I am a professional, and what I found confirmed what 31 years in talent acquisition had already taught me. The modern résumé is not a document. It is a cry for help, formatted in Calibri.
I review roughly 400 résumés a day. Each receives 1.3 seconds of my attention, a figure I have mentioned before and will keep mentioning, because none of you appear to have absorbed its implications.
In 1.3 seconds I register the paper, the font, the photograph, and the general moral posture of the applicant. Everything I need. The tips below are how you survive that window. They are not suggestions. They are the accumulated wisdom of a man who has rejected more people than most wars.
01One page. Times New Roman. Twelve point.
Your career fits on one page. If it does not fit on one page, you have not had a career, you have had a sequence of incidents. Times New Roman, because it is the typeface of institutions, and twelve point, because ten point implies you are hiding something and fourteen implies you have nothing to hide, which is worse.
02Open with an objective statement, in the third person.
'Gordon Beale seeks a challenging position leveraging his synergies.' Beautiful. The third person signals that you are already thinking of yourself as an asset to be managed, which is exactly how we will be thinking of you. First person is for diaries.
03Include a professional photograph.
Studio quality, top right corner, gentle smile, one raised eyebrow if you can manage it without looking unwell. I am told photographs on résumés invite bias. Correct. I am biased toward people who look employable, and I have been since 1995.
04State your date of birth and marital status.
Employers cannot legally ask, which is precisely why volunteering the information is so powerful. It says: I have nothing to hide and no knowledge of labor law. Both are qualities we treasure. Married reads as stable. Say married.
05List your typing speed.
85 words per minute, formatted in bold. It does not matter that the role is Chief Data Scientist. A typing speed on a résumé is like a firm handshake on paper. It tells me you were educated during a period when education worked.
06Your GPA belongs on the page. So does your high school.
You people delete your high schools from your résumés the moment you turn 24, and then you wonder why nobody trusts you. I captained a debate team in 1981 and it is still on my CV, in a serif font, where it will remain until my death.
07Hobbies: golf, sailing, squash.
A hobbies section exists so I can determine whether we could stand next to each other at a reception. Golf, sailing, and squash are hobbies. 'Gaming' is a symptom. 'True crime podcasts' is a confession. If you have no acceptable hobbies, write golf anyway and then take up golf before the interview. You have time. You are unemployed.
08'References available upon request.'
This line is mandatory. Yes, I know that everyone knows that references are available upon request. That is not the point. The point is ritual. A résumé without this line is like a letter without a signature, technically complete and spiritually void.
09Print it. Cardstock. Ivory. Linen finish. 32 lb minimum.
I have covered paper weight in my previous dispatch, but repetition is how adults learn. A résumé that arrives as a PDF weighs nothing, and I can feel that it weighs nothing, even on my monitor. A résumé on 32 lb ivory linen arrives with the quiet authority of a wedding invitation from a better family than yours.
10A discreet spritz of cologne on the envelope.
Discreet. One pass, from a distance of thirty centimeters. The candidate should be smelled only after the envelope is opened, never before. Last year a young woman sent a résumé faintly scented with cedar, and although the position had been filled internally eight months before it was posted, I kept her envelope. It is in my desk. That is what memorability smells like.
11Explain every gap, no matter how small.
A three-week gap in 2023 reads, to a trained eye, as three weeks in which nobody wanted you. Perhaps you were caring for a dying relative. Perhaps you were the dying relative and recovered. I am sympathetic, but I need it in writing, ideally in the third person, ideally framed as a growth opportunity that improved your availability.
12Do not list Excel.
Listing Excel as a skill is like listing breathing. Listing 'AI tools' is like listing the ability to be replaced. Skills sections should contain only things I can verify at the reception desk: typing, handshake, posture, punctuality. The rest is faith, and faith I reserve for candidates who golf.
13No QR codes. No links. No 'portfolio.'
I will not scan. I have never scanned. If your work is good, describe it to me in Times New Roman like your ancestors did. A QR code on a résumé says the real you is elsewhere, and I promise you, elsewhere is where I will file your application.
14The ATS is an excuse.
Every week a candidate tells me his résumé was 'filtered out by the ATS.' I have worked in this industry for 31 years and I have never met an ATS. Nobody in my office has met an ATS. You were not filtered by software. You were filtered by me, in 1.3 seconds, for reasons the software gets blamed for. Blaming the machine is the modern way of avoiding item 15.
15Accept that the résumé was never the problem.
A résumé, however heavy the cardstock, only gets you remembered. What gets you hired is everything else I have written about: the follow-up calls at 7:40 in the morning, the in-person visit, the initiative shown at a recruiter's preferred establishment on a Thursday evening. Marcus asks, from time to time, whether the young man with the Negronis ever found work. He did not. But we speak of him, which is more than I can say for the 400 of you I rejected today.
Frequently asked questions
Should my résumé really be one page, even with 15 years of experience?
Fifteen years that cannot be summarized in one page were not experience. They were attendance.
Is an email address acceptable in the contact section?
Acceptable, yes. An AOL address is better than acceptable. It signals loyalty, continuity, and a healthy suspicion of trends, three things your generation cannot fake, though I invite you to try.
What paper weight is too heavy?
There is a line, and it is 110 lb. Beyond that the résumé stops being a document and becomes a plaque. Confidence is welcome. Furniture is not.
Résumé finally heavy enough?
Submit it somewhere your commitment can be measured. From $5 per application.
See pricing →