Five Things You Don't Need To Include On Your Resume

 




Every Job You’ve Ever Held
You can pick and choose which jobs to include on your resume. If you took the wrong job and quickly fled, just leave it out. When you were laid off or relocated, people expect to see a gap before the next job. If you did anything work-related at all, re-frame the gap as Independent Consulting.
Starting and Ending Months for Your Past Positions
Don’t worry about the starting and ending months for your past positions. We only need to know the years. If you started a job in January 2013 and left in September, use “2013″ to describe your timeframe on that job. Likewise, if you took a job in February 2008 and left in March of 2010, use “2008 – 2010″ for the dates on your resume.
Your Tasks and Duties at Each Job
Job application forms, whether the paper kind or the electronic kind, ask you to list the tasks and duties you performed at each job. That’s idiotic, because nearly anyone can extrapolate your tasks and duties from your job title. Also, telling us the tasks and duties doesn’t give us any hint as to how well you performed the job or what you left in your wake there.
Instead of tasks and duties, tell us some Dragon-Slaying Stories. Those are stories about you making a difference in your job.
Your Exact Job Title, If It’s Confusing
It won’t help your next manager to see on your resume that you held the title Special Projects Coordinator III. That tells us nothing. Re-frame your titles so that they match up to normal titles in the real world. Don’t give yourself an imaginary retroactive promotion, of course, but let us know through your reported job title what sort of work you did. Here are some translations to help you:
Re-frame “Program Manager II” to “Marketing Manager for Pet Neutraceuticals” if that’s the job you performedRe-frame “Office Manager” to “Office Manager/HR Coordinator” if your job was a 50/50 mix of Office Management and HR.
Re-frame “Engineer III” to “Telephony Engineer” if you looked after your company’s telephony operations.
The past-employment verification process, if it happens at all, will happen late in the interviewing pipeline, by which time you’ll have had lots of opportunity to clarify anything on your resume that might not jibe 100% with your past employer’s records.
Any Indication of Your Age 
I’m 54 and proud of it but I also understand why job-seekers might not be dying to share their birthdates with strangers. You don’t need to have any indication of your age on your resume. You can leave out the graduation dates from college and drop out jobs that you performed eons ago. You can mention jobs you held in your resume Summary without including them in the body of your resume.
It’s a new day. The resume format is much more human and flexible now than it was years ago. Brand yourself the way you want to present to the world, and send out a resume that you feel great about!