15 Outdated Details You Should Remove From Your Resume
When you first drafted your resume, you probably matched it with the advice of those who were helping you at the time: your college professor, your parents, a friend, or the wisdom of the Internet. Since the norms for job seekers have changed over the years, most of our resumes don’t keep up with them as we’ve been busy with real life and haven’t kept up with resume trends. You may have tweaked your resume here and there, but it’s likely that you’re still carrying extra information and details with you that you no longer need.
If it’s been a long time since you last updated your resume, there are probably at least a few things you can afford to remove to free up space, focus on what makes you great, and avoid bias.
Your home address
Including your home address on our resumes is a holdover from the days when companies would reject candidates by snail mail and had to know where to send the letter. At the moment, rejection by regular mail is quite rare, so it is no longer necessary to include your full mailing address on your resume. It is also recommended that you do not include your home address on documents that you often send through online portals.
Instead of adding your full address, just write down the nearest city or metropolitan area, such as New York, NY or Dallas-Fort Worth, TX. If you’re applying for a remote job, your location generally doesn’t matter much other than what state you’re in for tax purposes, and if you’re going to work in-person or hybrid roles, the focus is on how you get to work. area (compared to your literally front door).
soft skills
Things like the ability to communicate or work well in a team are great qualities, but in most cases, someone reading your resume will assume that you have these qualities. Space on your resume is better spent highlighting complex skills, such as a technology you know how to use: Salesforce, Python, or Greenhouse are all skills that are usually essential to the job, and you can clearly indicate your mastery. Anyone can claim to be “very organised”.
In particular, listing soft skills can sometimes even backfire if you’re dealing with a particularly tough resume reviewer who might wonder if you don’t have better skills to highlight. I tend to think of it as if someone told you that he’s a great kisser – sure, maybe, but it’s kind of weird that they even say that.
Skill points
If you’re not already familiar, skill dots are usually 5-10 small dots (or sometimes colored stripes) that people use to show how good they are at a given skill. I’ve read a lot of resumes with skill points supposedly put in there to show me what you’re really good at and what you’re not very good at. I have a desperate vendetta against skill points.
When using the dot system to indicate how skilled you are at something, it is not clear to an outsider what separates two dots from three. Maybe you have four points in Microsoft Excel, but only three points in Google Slides, but as a stranger reading a resume, I don’t know what the difference is, and only invites me to wonder why you are not five points good. Using these visual cues also naturally draws attention to things you’re not good at, instead of focusing on the good.
If you’re good enough at a skill to include on your resume, leave it as it is and don’t warn it with random dots or stripes. Similarly, if you’re really unsure about a skill, it’s best not to use it and be honest about what you have yet to learn.
Types of computers you have used
At the moment, it is assumed that you can work on a Mac or PC, so there is no need to include this on your resume. In the days when computers were new, this was a much more important skill, but at this point, it’s akin to just saying that you’ve used a computer before. If you’re applying for a tech or IT job this becomes more important, but if you’re a regular computer user, you don’t need to spend space on this.
Your age, race or religion
The interviewer is prohibited from asking questions about your age, race, ethnicity, or religion, so do not volunteer this information. People are prohibited from asking these questions due to bias, ageism, and racism, all of which can divert attention from the actual skills needed when making a hiring decision. Most hiring processes take steps to eliminate bias where possible, which is why we want to do the same when it comes to your resume.
Let those details come up if you choose to share them, but don’t risk someone skipping your resume just because of your religious or ethnic background.
Your photo
While I understand the urge to include your photo on your resume, upload this great photo to LinkedIn or Instagram instead. First, trying to integrate a photo into a document almost always causes formatting issues, and your photo ends up taking up a lot more space than it deserves, or so small that it’s hardly worth including anyway. On top of that, most photos tend to make the recruiter feel OK at best and uncomfortable at worst. Let your interviewer focus on your accomplishments, not your core.
Including your photo can also lead to bias for the same reasons you shouldn’t include your race, age, or religion. People make hasty decisions based on what the other person looks like, often without even realizing it, and we don’t want that to stop anyone from focusing on your accomplishments.
Your GPA
Unless you just graduated from college, your GPA is not important to those who want to hire you (unless, of course, it’s a university). When people don’t have professional experience, we rely on the GPA to try to draw conclusions about what kind of worker they might be. But if you have at least one job outside of school, it is much more valuable than your grades in school.
If your GPA wasn’t amazing, including this could also backfire and give someone a reason to reject you for less than stellar ratings, even if your grades don’t matter for the job. It doesn’t take up much space, but it’s still better to make a mistake and delete it after you’ve got your first job.
Classes you took in college or high school
As with your GPA, classes are only useful if you have no other professional experience to speak of (and even then, you should focus more on projects or confessions rather than just celebrating that you attended classes). You can always mention particularly interesting classes during the interview, but you don’t have to spend time listing them on your resume.
Clubs or study abroad semesters in high school or college
Your study abroad semester in Spain is cool, but after you’ve completed college for a year or two, it no longer needs to be on your resume. If you had a job or internship during this period, you can definitely list it, but list the job under your work experience rather than listing the semester under Education. If, like me, you mostly got drunk and annoyed you while studying abroad, you might want to remove this from your resume, as it adds little to your relevant professional experience. You can always mention your time abroad to add texture during an interview, but you don’t have to take up space on your resume by writing it down.
One word of caution: if you have been involved in Greek life and would like your sorority or fraternity to be listed on your resume, feel free to. Because Greek life is so widespread and people build close ties to their sorority or fraternity, you can grab the attention of other members if they read your resume. However, only keep this if you have space available on your resume. If you’re choosing between your sorority listing or the recognition you’ve earned at work, choose recognition.
Any details from high school
Whether you went to college or not, people usually assume that you graduated from high school and there is no need to put that on your resume. Even if you haven’t graduated from high school, take advantage of this assumption. It’s better to use the space to highlight your college education or professional experience rather than where you went to high school. Especially if you’ve had multiple jobs, your high school experience has little to do with the skills you have today.
The year you entered high school or college
Even if you just graduated from college, the only detail that matters to who views your resume is the year you graduated. Whether it took you four years or six years to graduate, the important thing is that you completed your studies, so remove the details of exactly when you started your education. If you’re currently pursuing a degree, include the year you plan to graduate in – even if that changes over time, no one reading your resume will be following things that closely.
We can also apply the same principle if you transferred school in the middle of your studies. Instead of listing both schools and the years you attended, you can narrow down the list to the school where you completed your degree. Like the other things on this list, you can always mention a transfer or extension during your interview, but you don’t have to put it on your resume.
Recommendations
Many companies check references during your interview, but almost none of them check references right away . While it’s nice to know that you’ll be able to provide references, this is another one of those things where most people will just assume that you can provide references later and don’t need to confirm it on your resume. If your resume still says “Links available upon request”, you can cut that out as well. Keep these guidelines handy, but save them for when your recruiter actually asks for them.
Anything overtly negative about your previous employer
It’s okay to point out that you got fired or that the corporate culture of your last company didn’t suit you, but avoid harsh conversations about your previous employer, especially on your resume. I’ve seen resumes stating all the bad things the former company did to someone, or calling their former management a bad person, and while it’s certainly possible it’s true, it’s still not a very good first impression. Focus on yourself and your accomplishments and don’t waste time and energy talking about why your previous company sucked (even if it did).
Social networks not related to work
If you’re not thrilled about a potential employer browsing your social media, leave it at that. If you have a portfolio or a personal website, these are perfectly reasonable and up-to-date things to leave on your resume so that the reader can delve deeper into your work if they want to. LinkedIn is another common profile to link to, as you usually explicitly set it up as a professional profile, and you can even use your Twitter or Instagram to work if you’re a writer or photographer. But if you mainly use your social media for dog pictures and memes, it’s probably best not to include them on your resume. This is especially true if you haven’t used social media in a while or if your profile is private. Most resume readers will believe you’re a real person and won’t need to see a Twitter profile that you haven’t used since 2011.
How much can you squeeze lying down
While I’m sure you’ve worked very hard on PR, this is not the case with your resume. Yes, I read resumes that indicated how much they could bench, and no, it was not even that much weight. It’s up to you to decide if you want to include an Interests section on your resume that lists the non-work things you love to do, but if you do include it, it’s best to keep everything general and concise so that your resume stays focused. , What do you do. makes you a great candidate, not the particularities of your hobbies.