5 things you should exclude from your resume

Here are some things that you should steer clear of while writing your resume

We all want our resume to shine out from others, when looking for a job. So, we sometimes tend to add more and more stuff thinking that this will make our resumes more attractive. But on the contrary, what it really does is make it lengthy and boring. Hiring managers are a group of really busy people who have to go through a lot of resumes. They do not take more than 6 or 7 seconds to judge whether the person is worth taking the time to interview. Here are some things that you should steer clear of while writing your resume:

1. Irrelevant Experiences and Skills

The summer you spent teaching painting to school kids sure added value to your life, but it will do nothing good in your resume, if what you are looking for is a job in finance. The recruiter only cares about your proficiency in the skills required for the position. Only include experiences that are relevant to the job and add value to your resume, otherwise leave it off. Along with that, skills that were outdated long time ago don’t need to be included.

2. Personal Details: Marital Status, Gender, etc. etc.

A hiring manager couldn’t care less about your personal details. Stuffing your resume up with all these things will only lead to a resume that is way too long. You may be rejected even if you are competent and possess all the necessary skills for that position.

3. Generic Description of duties

“Performed all the duties carefully and efficiently; Displayed high aptitude in working with all the machines” and the list goes on. Rather than phrasing your sentences like this, more weightage should be given to how you added value to your company. Description should include the numbers and figures you achieved or the names of the tools you worked on. The kind of work you did in your previous job plays a great role in determining how skilful and capable you are for the position you are looking for.

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4. References

You should not waste the precious space on your resume for things such as a list of references. The recruiters will always ask you if they want to talk to your references. References are completely unnecessary to include in your resume and does not need to be called attention to.

5. Salary History and Expectations

Your previous salary doesn’t matter to the person who may employ you for your next job. Therefore, it should be excluded from your resume. Also, don’t include your salary expectations because if they are too high, you may seem too expensive
to hire and if they are too low you may seem desperate or even unemployable. Only include this detail if you are asked to do so. In such case you can always adopt diplomacy and say that salary is negotiable.


Writing “the perfect resume one-page resume” can be a tough task regardless of you being a fresher or an experienced employee. But it doesn’t have to be like that because Resumod is always there to help . Go on and check our wide range of blogs and sample resumes and get yourself the resume you always longed for.

This post was first published on the Resumod Blog

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