Look At A Poor Sample Resume?

Answer 1

Looking at a good sample resume before you write your own can be rather helpful because it will show you how to format the document and what you should include. It can give you ideas about what you want your resum to look like so that you will be taken seriously by the people you want to work for. You may even want to do this if you have been in the workforce of twenty years or so and you are now looking for a new job. Resumes may have changed a lot in the last two decades, and you need to familiarize yourself with all of the changes.

However, it may be even better for you to look at an example of a poor resume. You can see what other people have done wrong in the past. You could start by looking for common mistakes to avoid. This could include formatting the document so that it is very confusing, leaving out the right contact information, or leaving the name of an old company at the top of a resume when applying to a new company. These are things that people do nearly every day, and seeing them can help you to avoid the same errors.

The poor example may even be able to show you rather large mistakes that people have made, things that they did that were strange and different. Often, the people will have done these things in an effort to be memorable. Someone might include a picture of themselves jumping out of an airplane instead of a professional photo, for instance, because that can grab someone's attention. Unless the job includes skydiving, though, doing something like this just makes you look like you do not take the position or the company seriously. This only hurts your chances for employment.

If nothing else, at least look at one poor sample resume before you put yours in the mail. Make sure that it is better than the example. This will keep you from ending up on the list of poor examples in the future. You may even learn more from the bad resume than you will from the good one.