Made a resume mistake for 2 years until my boss pointed it out

I was putting 'attention to detail' on my resume but kept using bullet points that were pages long. My boss pulled me aside after a meeting and said 'your reports are good but nobody reads past the first line.' I realized I was formatting everything wrong the whole time. Talked to a friend in HR and she told me I had too many words and not enough white space. Anyone else find out they were doing something basic wrong for way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

nathan90122h ago

My old roommate was an editor and she used to say the same thing to me all the time. I get that too many words can be bad, but I think the whole "attention to detail" thing is overdone anyway. Everybody puts that on their resume so it doesn't mean anything. I actually prefer a dense report if the information is good. Like in my field, engineering, people want all the specifics so they can make decisions. If you leave out too much, they just come back asking for details and you waste more time. Maybe your boss just wanted it shorter for his own convenience, not because it was wrong. HR people are not the ones doing the job, they just like things to look neat on paper.

the_jake21h ago

@nathan901 you're not wrong, but I think you're mixing up two different things. Detail in a report for engineers is totally different from detail in a resume. Resumes are scanned in like 6 seconds. Nobody reads every word. If it's dense and wordy, key stuff gets missed. Your engineering boss might want all that info, sure. But a hiring manager just needs the highlights. Leave the specifics for the interview.