Spent 2 years formatting my resume wrong until a recruiter in Austin told me to ditch the objective statement

I was sitting in a coffee shop when she pointed out that my opening paragraph about being a 'motivated self-starter' was the first thing recruiters skip, and suddenly all those automated rejections made sense - has anyone else had a simple tweak like that totally change their job hunt?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_ruby26d ago

Two years of submitting a resume with something recruiters skip instantly? That is brutal, I would have been so mad if I found that out after all that time. Did you end up getting way more callbacks after you deleted that objective section?

seth_shah26d ago

Yeah "recruiters skip instantly" hits close to home. I had a similar thing happen with my skills section, wasted about a year before someone finally told me it was too generic and nobody reads that part.

william_harris26d ago

Right, the skills section is what got me too. I had a boring bullet list of "Microsoft Office" and "team player" stuff for over a year. A friend finally told me to actually show my skills in the work experience part instead of just listing them. I switched it to short action phrases like "Ran daily data reports in Excel" and "Led a small team project for three months." My callbacks went up a good bit after that. The trick is to prove you can do the thing, not just claim you can do it.