How do I decide what to take off of my résumé?

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Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company's workplace advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. This week's question: How do I decide what to take off of my resume? Answer: There is much debate about if your resume really needs to be one page. But regardless of if it's one page or two, there are some common elements you can cut to make your resume easier to read and more effective. Here are a few: Work history that's more than 15 years old. This one isn't cut and dry. You shouldn't just delete everything before 2010. But here's what to consider cutting or condensing. If you have been at your last or current position for fewer than 5 years, you can keep a few bullet points under each of your previous jobs dating back 10 to 15 years. But if a role on your resume is from more than 10 to 15 years ago, your old responsibilities, tasks, and accomplishments are likely not very relevant anymore. The exception is if you are looking to make a career change and you have older relevant job experience. You can list your positions with just title and dates, but add a couple of bullet points to the older related experience. Your cover letter—yes, you still should write one—is the best place to connect the dots for the hiring manager on how your older experience is related. Jargon, clichés, and hyperbole. You should avoid unnecessary jargon, clichés, and hyperbole in all parts of your job search process, but your resume is the most critical place to trim it out. If your resume is being read by AI, phrases like seasoned solutions-oriented team player won't pass the keyword screens. Those words are similarly meaningless and might actively work against you if your resume is being read by a real person. The best resumes follow the basic rules of good writing. Think of the golden rule of prose: show, don't tell. An easy way to do this is to replace adjectives with numbers and facts. Instead of "dynamic sales professional with a distinguished track record," try "closed over $1 million in new partnerships each quarter." Your objective or summary and your mailing address. I don't know who ever thought an objective on a resume was necessary. Your objective is to get hired, so any anything you write here is just throat-clearing wasted space. Some people replace objective with a summary, which in theory can be useful for recruiters or AI that's doing a quick scan. Most often though, summaries are also useless because they are filled with meaningless buzzwords. See above. You're better off formatting your resume in an easy-to-scan way where your skills and accomplishments are clear. Including your mailing address is a relic of a time when applications were sent via snail mail and is an easy place to streamline. If you're applying to an in-person job, however, you may still want to include the city you live in. The header space of your resume should also include your email, phone, website, portfolio link, and one or two professional social media profiles like LinkedIn. Fancy formatting, your photo, basic skills. If you are early in your career and feel like you don't have enough to fill the page, it can be tempting to pad your resume with adding basic skills like professional efficient with Microsoft Office suite. But skills like that are assumed, and adding them can actually make you look less experienced. Don't try to fill the space with colorful large fonts, formatting tricks, or your headshot either. White space is better, and a simple format is easier to read by both humans and applicant tracking systems. If you feel like your resume is too thin, you may need to expand your definition of experience.

That's all today from Fast Company. Talk to you tomorrow.

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