By Leshi Adebayo
A resumé says a lot about you — covering your personal and professional experience, skills and education history. It is one thing to know what to include when compiling your resumé, knowing what to never include is another.
In this piece, BlackBox Nigeria highlights 7 simple details you should never include in your resumé.
1. Use of unprofessional emails
Email addresses like butterfield243@gmail.com, sweetgirl@gmail.com, etc are unprofessional. It is advisable to use emails containing your name e.g bayokujore@gmail.com.
2. Multiple phone numbers
Adding multiple phone numbers to your resumé will reduce your chances of receiving important messages from prospective employers. Hence, the need to have a single contact number that is active and reachable.
3. Personal details
You might think, “This is okay.” In the real sense, it isn’t. There is really no need to include personal details like your marital status, sexual orientation, nationality, etc in your resumé. However, some jobs might require that you provide these information.
4. Pronouns
In a standard resumé, it is right to use absent first person formats where all pronouns such as I, she, he, we, they, etc are excluded.
5. Elaborate formats and designs
Your resumé is not an avenue to display your design skills. It is advisable to have it as simple as possible. When choosing a design and resume format, it is better to stick with the words “less” and “simple”.
6. Personal pictures or headshots
Unless the employer in question demands that you include a picture or your headshot, it is not right or necessary to add them into your resumé.
7. Spelling/grammatical errors
This is a major turn-off. In most cases, errors in spelling and grammar reduce the value of your resumé before your prospective employer. It gives you an unprofessional look. So, it is important to edit your resumé as many times as possible, and ensure it is free from typographical, spelling and grammatical errors.
