Ex-Google recruiter shares 3 types of phrases job seekers should not use in their resumes

April 25, 2024 / 12:48 PM IST

Nolan Church was a recruiter with Google for about three years. (Image credit: LinkedIn)

HR executives usually have multiple job openings, which means that they may have to sift through hundreds, if not thousands, of resumes looking for the perfect candidates. In such cases, having a good resume can help job seekers stand out. But in the eagerness to sell their abilities to the recruiters, candidates often tend to go overboard and it ends up harming their prospects.

Nolan Church, the CEO of salary data company FairComp and former recruiter of Google and DoorDash, recommends that job seekers avoid these three types of phrases to get a better chance at being hired.

1.) Sentences that are more than '25 words' long

"All of these sentences should be less than 25 words maximum," Church told CNBC Make It. "Probably even shorter than that. Because the goal of a resume is for me to very quickly understand what you've done." He added that recruiters are likely to have just "three-to-five seconds" to go through each resume. "Time is the enemy in life and is the enemy in business," the former Google executive told the publication. "The faster that we can move, the faster that we can solve problems."

2.) Avoid a 'word salad' of keywords

People tend to ″have this word salad based off of what the [job description] says," Church told CNBC Make It. If a marketing job requires candidates to implement strategic marketing, refine the company's messaging platforms, and engage stakeholders, including every one of those terms in one sentence would be a bad move, he added. Instead, Church recommended creating a rule when writing bullet points under job titles: "You're not allowed to use more than one keyword in a sentence," he said.

3.) Avoid writing a list of tasks 

"I don't give a s--- about your tasks," Church told the publication. The day-to-day duties of your job like emailing with your boss or creating your quarterly goals do not give a concrete sense of what you accomplished and how you helped the business move forward, he said. "The one I see all the time that just blows my mind is 'coordinated meetings with X'. There's literally no business impact for coordinating meetings," Church told CNBC Make It.

Instead, he suggested job seekers highlight in their resumes what they did that truly benefitted the business, like getting new clients or exceeding sales goals, and use numbers to compliment it.

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