Is your old resume format hurting you?
One of the things that can make your resume get rejected by a reviewer right away is outdated formatting. It indicates that you’re possibly out of touch, older, and potentially even less competent. These are all assumptions that employers can make without even being entirely conscious of their biases, so having a current resume format is important.
What are the things that make your resume look old? This isn’t a comprehensive list, but it’s some of the things that are most obvious, with what to do instead:
- A complete address—you only need city and state
- An older email address like Hotmail, AOL, or Yahoo—update to something newer like Gmail or Outlook
- An objective— use a professional summary instead
- A work history that goes back more than 15 years—if you need to capture older experience, remove the dates
- An older graduation date—keep your degree names but lose the dates if they’re earlier than the early 2000s
- Outdated skills—replace things like Skype and GoToMeeting with Google Meet and Zoom
- “References available upon request”—just skip it. It’s wasted space.
What are some other things you’ve seen that make a resume look old-fashioned and out of date?
