Job applicants that have not had to look for new employment in a long time will often turn to a resume example that they find online as a starting point for their own resume. The problem they often face is that the most commonly found resumes will be of very low quality. There are multiple reasons for this. Most commonly, the resume example will be either cheaply written from scratch or taken from a database, made anonymous and placed online without checking for even simple errors. The purpose behind this is often to create content for the purposes of driving traffic to a web site, without providing a genuine benefit to the user. Unfortunately, it is too simple for a novice employment seeker to pick such a document as a starting point. To look your best, use resume experts to help you draft your best resume.
In order to land the job, it is necessary to be able to distinguish a good resume sample from a bad one. There are multiple prominent signs by which a bad sample can be distinguished. Poor spelling and grammar are dead giveaways. A person that actually used a resume would have probably proof-read it at least once. If the document in front of it looks like it was written by a foreign child, it probably was. Seeing missing components is not as common but a cheap resume sample will often be missing basic information, like the email address or phone number. What person would submit a resume that was missing one of the most basic contact methods? This applies to a CV or curriculum vitae as well. Another common feature of a cheap resume example is that the experience section is very basic and lacks the kind of details you would expect in a professional resume. What applicant would ever describe their position as “Managed shipping logistics for software firm as manager”? Besides the bad grammar, you would expect anyone who has anything to write about their job experience to actually put more on paper at least out of sheer pride than just a one-liner. When you see a sample management resume with a description like this, it doesn’t mean the person writing it was sloppy. It means the document is fake and you shouldn’t be duped into using it. How else can you tell? The resume sample isn’t attached as a doc file and is instead rewritten in HTML for you to look at in your browser. This means the creators of the document have decided to use it to make it look like their site has more content than it really does.
It may seem that the factors I list here are simple and that even a college student looking for his first job would notice something is wrong. In reality, it is quite common for recruiters and hiring managers to receive documents based on just such low quality resume samples and cover letters examples. The reason for that is that it is simple and tempting to just use something you find online. Don’t let yourself become one of them because a bad resume is worse than none. Working on the way you present yourself to employers will give you a considerable advantage and give you real value. Finally, to look your absolute best, don’t overlook resume experts!
