Even if you’re a wallflower, it must be your objective to stand out when job seeking.
You need to have the most compelling, interesting, and strongest resume possible to compete in a new or crowded job market. Before you fall victim to the shortcut of using the same resume you did last time you were on the job hunt, ask yourself, “Am I really putting my best me forward?”
If you need to rework, retool, reconstruct, or completely rewrite your professional resume, steer clear of these common resume errors:
- Failing to tailor your resume to the specific job posting. Job postings are written to attract the “right” candidates that match the current and future needs of an organization. The best job postings enumerate the most important skills, any unique qualities, education, and training minimums. If you aren’t tailoring your experiences and successes achieved in past employment to the key skills required, you most likely won’t hear from the employer. Many employers and search firms use keyword searches of resumes to find candidate matches. If you’ve provided general, non-specific information in the form of a boilerplate resume that you use for every posting, your resume may not survive the initial screening review.
- Exaggerating amounts of monies, size of gifts, or percentage of gift growth. If you’ve included amounts of monies raised, sizes and types of gifts (e.g., major, planned, corporate), or the percentage of gift growth in a fundraising area over a specific time period, be sure your numbers are 100 percent accurate. If you include information that can be easily found via an organization’s public annual reports, portions of an organization’s Board meetings, newsletters, or website, potential employers may compare information from your resume with actual information from your current employer. If you’re considering “fudging” numbers—don’t! Not only is it unethical, it’s a sure way to disqualify yourself from consideration.
- Taking credit for the work of a group or another individual. While it’s tempting and may enhance a future employer’s interest in you, taking credit for funds you didn’t raise or failure to acknowledge that gifts were part of a group effort is relatively easy to uncover. Publicly available information (e.g., announcements on advancement office websites or organizational press releases) can shed light on misinformation. When in doubt, indicate you were a member of a team or a partner with another fundraiser.
- Naming a private individual donor in your resume narrative. When you’ve received a major gift from an individual with local, state, regional, or national prominence, you may want to announce your success to the world. However, including the name of an individual donor/or donors in your resume narrative, even with the donor’s permission, is a hard “no.” Donors’ rights include the ability to remain anonymous, especially in terms of gift size. Even if the donor is OK with public sharing about their donation, including donors’ names in a resume is a bad idea.
- Implying or inferring experience or expertise when you don’t have it. While some fundraising positions are skill-specific (e.g., annual fund, special events, or planned giving), the majority of fundraising positions require broad experiences across a wide fundraising skill set. The temptation to be responsive to a job posting by indicating all-inclusive expertise is great; it’s also fraught with potential problems. If you are hired with the expectation you can do any and every fundraising task and your skills/experiences are limited or non-existent in key areas, you’ll be in over your head from day one.
- Failing to include volunteer experiences that could enhance and improve desired qualities. While you may not have direct vocational/paid employment experience in a fundraising skill, you could have germane experiences as a volunteer (e.g., chair of a development committee or chair of a special event). Don’t forget to include and clearly describe all relevant volunteer experiences in your resume. These often-forgotten details could be the difference between an application rejection and an interview.
- Ensure your resume is consistent with your employment or educational information on social media. The first thing many employers do is check LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media sites to learn more about you. They also check to see if resume information is consistent with social media postings. Be certain the information on your resume matches precisely what is on your social media accounts.
Your resume is your initial introduction to prospective employers. Having a compelling resume is the difference between a rejection and the first step in the job interviewing process. Make sure you always put your best you forward.