A column over at CNNMoney has some good advice on what to leave out of your resumé.
- Don’t include your hobbies.
- Don’t include your marital status.
- Don’t include information about your children.
- Don’t explain why you’re moving to a new town.
- Don’t detail the reasons you left your previous jobs.
- Don’t send your resumé as an attachment with a questionable name. The article cites one person who sent a resumé saved as ‘ssseexxxyyy_2006′.
- Don’t offer an unprofessonial e-mail address. The article notes the real-life example of bruceypants@somedomain.com.
- Don’t inlcude personal data like your home address or your Social Security number — don’t make yourself a target for identity theft.
“Adopt this simple motto,” [a staffing director] suggests. “Professional, yes. Personal, no.” Enough said.
Remember: Your most important asset is your health. Your second most important asset is your career. Help yourself to a good start by keeping your resumé professional.
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I’m really surprised at the bit about home address.
This list is clearly for US jobs. If applying to work in a company in Europe, many companies will require marriage status, age, and even photos on resumes. I believe the same is true for Asian countries as well.
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Really? Why do they need that info?
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I can vouch that many Asian countries do ask for marital status, age, and yes, photos.
I have a close friend who does interviews for an electronics corporation he works for, and he said that the best thing a person can do is put down one or two personal hobbies or interests on their resume. It helps break the ice and start a positive conversation.
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Here’s a helpful list of what’s legal and illegal to ask during the application process, under U.S. law. In short, you can’t ask an applicant their age, their marital status, whether they own their house or rent, what their birthplace or ethnicity is, names of relatives, or club affiliations.
So don’t make companies nervous by putting any of that information in your resume!
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Thank God Australia doesn’t expect photos on resumes either. I think it just introduces the chance of discrimination.
The note about the home address is interesting though. I wonder if it seems professional posting up a PO Box in a resume?
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I can confirm the previous comments. As an American relocating to Germany, i was shocked when i was informed that I MUST include marital status, hobbies, family info (including jobs of my parents) on the resume…as well as a photo.
Then at my first job here, when trying to hire a few part-time telephone support folks, the first criteria our boss used to filter the applicants was obviously the photo…and then passed the slimmed down stack of resumes on to us for evaluation.
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@Spoonman: I don’t really know why companies in other countries require information that’s illegal in the US, but my impression from talking to European friends is that your marital status, age, etc. are seen as valid concerns. It certainly opens up room for inappropriate discrimination. But, if your resume doesn’t show this information, be prepared for the interviewer to ask about them.
I interviewed with P&G in Belgium and had handed over my standard US resume. The interviewers asked me if I was married, had any kids, and between my husband and I, whose career drove our family decisions (to relocate, etc.), among many other questions. As an American, I’m not sure how I feel about delving into all these issues, but I suppose you could argue that Europeans have an extremely pragmatic approach toward finding the right applicant.
On the other hand, job applicants in the US can take it to the other extreme. I was surprised to learn that many people, both men and women, consistently removed their wedding rings before going into an interview in order to present the image that they had no other commitments besides giving 110% to the job and company.
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Women just reentering the workforce need to use their time as full-time homemaker and raiser of human beings evident on their resume. It takes a professional to run a house well and to raise worth while human beings. As an owner of a business, I always prefer people who have raised other people to people who have not.
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So. I understand this list is for people in the workforce. (And that this post is quite old and may well never get a response).
However, aren’t things a bit different for under graduate college students?
I’m heavily involved in my school’s newspaper, debate team, photography club, computing society, and science fiction association. Now, I know that the SciFi association should probably not go on my resumé, but what about the others? They are all hobbies of a sort…
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I wouldn’t really call news paper, debate team and computing hobbies, and if your photography is related to your newspaper activities or your focus of study I wouldn’t call it a hobby either. Things like that require responsibility, time-management and organizational skills as well as marketable skills. I’d put it on a resume (unless you have other qualifications that trump these and take up a page or more or they are unrelated to the job you want).
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