What to Keep and What to Cut From Your Resume

Hiring managers don't have a lot of time to review resumes, so it's important to make your professional resume as appealing as possible. One way to make your resume more appealing is to shorten it to one page. A one-page resume is much easier for a hiring manager to read, improving your chances of being passed through to the interview stage of the hiring process.

If you need to shorten your professional resume, make sure everything on the page is relevant to the job opening. You don't need to list the job you had bagging groceries when you were in high school; the hiring manager is more interested in your applicable knowledge and skills. If you are writing a resume from scratch instead of updating an old one, an easy way to make sure everything is relevant is to read the job description carefully. If a qualification is not mentioned in the description, you probably don't need to include it in your resume.

Read your resume several times to be sure you are not repeating the same information in multiple places. If you have redundant text in your professional resume, it is taking up space that could be used for more important information. If you used the same skill at several positions, your resume should have a section titled "Professional Skills." List all of your skills there instead of repeating them throughout the document. Not only does this help you avoid redundancy, it also makes it easier for a hiring manager to determine if you meet the minimum qualifications for a job.

You don't need to list every job duty you've ever performed, but some applicants make the mistake of doing so anyway. Your professional resume needs to show growth from one job to the next, so you need to eliminate any bullet points that overshadow your most important job duties. If your resume says you "Coordinated workshops for 1,000 participants," you don't need to mention that you answered the telephone or made copies. These lesser responsibilities are likely to overshadow an important qualification: the ability to plan large events from beginning to end.

If you still need to shorten your professional resume, go through it and see if you can find any weasel words that make you look weak or fail to communicate your knowledge and skills. Remove words such as good, exceptional, motivated, seasoned and outstanding from your resume before sending the document to hiring managers. It's better to use strong words to describe your job history and accomplishments.

If you are writing a resume for a potential employer, put yourself in the hiring manager's shoes. Most hiring managers want to see a one-page resume with content that is relevant to the position being filled. If your professional resume is too long, take the time to remove irrelevant text and delete weak words that take attention away from your positive attributes.

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