Hi, I'm Nick - Colorado's Small Business Marketing Expert. I'm at war with business as usual. I make small business fun.

1. Forgetting to Spell, Grammar, and Idiot-Check
   • Everyone has done it at least once. You’re in a hurry, you need to get that resume out before someone else takes your dream job. Well, forgetting to spell, grammar and idiot-check can make the difference between “excellent stocking skills and excellent stalking skills.” Both are useful for work involving a women’s clothing store, but only one will get you hired.
2. IEatBabies@gmail.com
   
   • Now, if you have an e-mail like this, or anything remotely close to it, maybe it’s even just your initials and the year you went to high school, or maybe it’s your favorite Bratz doll name and her hair color followed by “QTPie” or “Hottie881″ or whatever – wrong, wrong, wrong. Change it now, I mean honestly – you sound like a porn star. First name, last name, first initial, whatever, make it professional, make it personal, and make it simple. Even if you do eat babies, save it for the interview and keep it off your resume. Unless the job you’re applying for is… professional baby eater.
3. Inconsistent Format
   
   • Line up your bullets, keep an identical font all the way through, and make sure your formatting is the same. If you italicize a job title once, do it everywhere else you have a job title. It only makes sense. And for the sake of your future employment, keep it simple! Think about your resume as a map – and a map has certain symbols which mean certain things, so unless you’re trying to ditch your friends in the woods, you want those symbols to always be the same.
4. You’re Hired, Now Who The Hell Are You?
   
   • If your contact information isn’t prominent enough, is too hard to read, or makes no sense, you’re going hear your feedback in the form of science. Format your phone number and e-mail address like a normal person, please – no artsy crap. (555) 555-5555, JoeSchmo@gmail.com. Also, your name should be the first and largest thing they see – not too large because it means you’re in love with yourself, and not too small because it means you have no confidence. If you’re one of those people that thinks big is never too big, a good rule of thumb is never go above 72pt font, Madonna. Another tip: ALWAYS, ALWAYS name your resume “firstname_lastname_resume.doc”. Not only does this increase visibility when you submit your resume online, but it keeps your future employers from guessing what the hell that word document is sitting on their desktop before they throw it in the Recycle Bin.
5. EYA, YD?
   
   • Explain Your Acronyms, Ya Dig? Seriously – spell it out the first time, put the abbreviation in parentheses afterward. Don’t be fancy, the person reading your resume probably has no idea what the hell STFU means, so explain it to them one letter at a time.
6. Here’s My Novel…
   
   • Its very simple: if your resume is more than one page, you will go to the top of the discard pile. Think about it – you have ADD, your employer probably has ADD, and even if they don’t, their time is limited by the thousands of applicants whose resume is sleeker than yours. One page is aerodynamic. Two pages and you might as well have sent your resume in on a brick through the window.
7. Well, I Kinda Saved the Company Some Money
   
   • Bust it out, son. You MUST use action words. If you don’t, people will assume you’re weak in character and weak in bed. That’s a combination you should strive to avoid. Don’t brag about your accomplishments, but be proud of them – and use the proper terms to describe them. “Built the most recognized support team at Dell.com” is good wording. “I’m the reason you can’t understand your tech support” is not.
8. I Have 8 Years of Sales Experience as a Whopper Salesman
   
   • Burger King does not count as a sales job. Seriously. Tailor your resume to suit each position (or at least job family) you are applying for. You wouldn’t want to put your twelve years of experience as a plumber down on your resume when applying for a marketing job. Employment gaps are okay as long as you did something to enhance your experience during that time. Most important of all – don’t try to stretch your “experience” into something it wasn’t. Maybe you did gain leadership experience managing the fry line, but you shouldn’t claim that you can head chef a kitchen because of it.
9. Understand What Goes First – Use Your Head
   
   • No jokes on this one: if you can’t understand that as a student, your education is far more important than any retail job you worked, you’re not going to get a job. The degree brings in the big bucks, so list it prominently. Career training brings in big bucks. All these things go first if you are a recent graduate. If you’re not, recent experience is the most important section, followed up by education – but education should ALWAYS be in the top two.
10. Fear, Stagnation, and Relevance
    
    • Your resume is the gateway to any number of different companies and positions. Never be afraid to send your resume out as far and as wide as possible. You will most certainly make new friends this way, and sometimes you will even get feedback. Never let your resume go more than 6 months without a serious overhaul. Keep track of everything you do in your current position (or, at least, what you’re doing to improve yourself when you are unemployed), and you will find that hitting the ground running when losing your job or transitioning jobs will be much easier!

Of course I couldn’t put everything I wanted into this article. There are plenty of other topics to talk about, including how to include references – or if to include references on the resume. To use or not to use an objective statement. This and more will come in later articles, and of course, you can always check out each of I Am Nick Armstrong’s main pages for more information and inspiration.

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