The top 3 mistakes women make on their resumes

The top 3 mistakes women make on their resumes

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1. Avoid diminishing your worth

A lot of women experience concern over seeming arrogant or abrasive in their resume material when they consider talking about their own successes and milestones.  In fact, the glaring difference between women’s resumes and men’s is that there is an insane confidence gap between the two sexes. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, either. 

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1. Avoid diminishing your worth

Many women admit to having some form of imposter syndrome or feelings that they don’t belong in the position or career they have, which is mostly due to the fact that they didn’t experience people that looked and thought like them in leadership roles while growing up or in their early careers. Messaging is important. Use powerful language. (Your male 

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1. Avoid diminishing your worth

counterparts certainly are.) We’re big fans of thesaurus.com and using job descriptions for positions you’re interested in at dream jobs to re-evaluate a resume.  List leadership skills you have acquired in a concise and clear way. And if you’ve taken on additional job responsibilities at work overtime — as most women certainly do — then 

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1. Avoid diminishing your worth

make that known in your job description. Show those employers how adaptable and supportive you can be, but let them know you’ll champion that position like no one else.

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2. Dazzle in your professional summary

Recruiters are often asked to view dozens – if not hundreds – of resumes during the hiring process for even just one position.  Often, resumes are passed through some sort of algorithm or the employer uses an advanced form of AI to help determine if the candidate’s resume is even worth looking at by human eyes, so the system 

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2. Dazzle in your professional summary

is already working against you. It’s up to you to take every opportunity to hype yourself up, including prioritizing that professional summary. While many people are used to writing a one-liner about their job desires at the top of their resume, it’s often not enough to just state the type of position you’re looking for or even your top three hireable qualities. 

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2. Dazzle in your professional summary

Consider a professional summary of your elevator pitch for yourself. It is the most compelling bit of information on your paper resume and should take precedence over other items. These 3-4 lines will summarize the most important reasons you’re qualified for the position you are applying to. Each professional summary will include a headline — a 3-4 word 

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2. Dazzle in your professional summary

summary of your career and its next step — that is often bolded for effect.  Following that, you should include a line of job titles you are considering, a line of high-level professional skills you’ve attained, the third line of impressive facts about what you’ve done for other companies or specific statistics on the growth you contributed 

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2. Dazzle in your professional summary

to, and the last line should include any accolades, awards, or defining moments in your career.

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3. Don’t pigeonhole yourself as support

Women spend so much of their lives in supporting roles, nurturing or being told to be nurturing, learning different ways to “be” over time.  Even women who do attain their leadership dreams and become CEOs, management, and owners are often categorized as nurturers, just because they are women. But changing the narrative – 

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3. Don’t pigeonhole yourself as support

coming at it from a different angle on your resume – can often change the way you are approached in a hiring situation. Using assertive language in your resume can not only be convincing but can be reassuring. It’s one thing to see women using words like “helped,” “assisted,” “was asked to,” and similar on resumes 

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3. Don’t pigeonhole yourself as support

while their male counterparts are peppering their work with “founded,” “exceeded,” “executed,” and “led.”  Another is the sheer comfort one can find in seeing someone be confident in their abilities. Remember, the hiring manager is in charge of making the right fit for their company. Someone who is familiar with more assertive language will ease 

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3. Don’t pigeonhole yourself as support

their minds and gives you the edge of being a phenomenal communicator.

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