---

From Susan Dunn, for About.com

See More about:

• resume
• cv
• curriculum vitae
• dos and don'ts
• writing advice

"Should I admit a weakness?” one of my coaching clients asked me. “Something tells me I shouldn’t.”

”Something” was telling her right. Your best tool in writing a good resume, is your intuition, or common sense aka Emotional Intelligence.

Weaknesses
Don’t talk about your weaknesses unless you’re asked. In my years as a Career Counselor for college students, I received fledgling resumes that read “I don’t like people” or “I hate talking on the phone.” On the one hand, such statements of extremes are rarely true, and on the other hand they are open to gross misinterpretation.

How do I know this? First-hand, of course, the way hard lessons are learned.

When I took my first job, I announced “I’m horrible at math.” To MY horror, all work demanding “math” was removed from my desk, grossly limiting my chances for advancement, and also leaving me to puzzle how to address this situation without appearing to “Methinks the lady doth protest too much”. [Shakespeare] “Wait, wait, I didn’t mean I was BAD at math.” And there goes my credibility. Save yourself some grief.

Later I made it through graduate statistics just fine. I had MEANT “in relation to my other skills, my math is lower, and also that I don’t wake up in the morning hoping to balance someone’s books.” However, I’ve done it.

A resume is in writing and you don’t get to “explain,” so be conservative.

Focus on what you’re good at. Extremes are rarely true. I’m thinking of the young woman who wrote on her resume, “I don’t like people.” Upon query, it turned out she liked ME, and I like to consider myself a person, doncha know. She didn’t like a CERTAIN KIND OF PERSON, which could be said of us all, and her gross generalization didn’t hold up under scrutiny. However, scrutiny is not what you’ll get from the recruiter who looks at your resume. What you’ll get is the roundfile.

So, unless you’re in a specialty so in demand you can apply with a bone in your nose (as one young male client told me back in the days when his field was, yes, desperately in demand), avoid leading with the “bone in your nose.”

The “bone in your nose” is also anything that will elicit a possibly negative reaction from the hirer. If you can put “president of a political organization” instead of “president of the young republicans,” this is better. Better yet put “president of an organization with 500 members”. (They will ask you about this, but talking allows more latitude.) You can also leave it off. If you put that you volunteer for the young republics, you stand the chance of alienating a percentage of your reviewers, depending upon their political beliefs, and how “open” they are to people in the opposing camps.

Avoid such statements as “I study metaphysics,” or “I’m a born again Christian.” Why? Because they aren’t pertinent to your ability to do the job. When you do bring it up, it can open a can of worms, i.e., “Well do you hire people according to their astrological chart?”

Talk to your broadest audience. For hobbies, put “working out” rather than “Chi Gong,” and “music” rather than “rap music”.

If you’re asked to reveal your weaknesses, use your head. Here are some suggestions:

• When applying for a high-stress unpredictable job, “My love of variety, though in a job like this that might come in handy.”
• When applying for an accounting job, “My need for things to be exact and attention to detail. I want everything to be right.”
• When applying as a paralegal, “Creativity. I like things structured, to know what I’m supposed to be doing and to do it.”
• When applying for a position where there’s been lots of turnover, “One weakness I have is that I like to stay in one position and not job hop. I tend to take a position and stay there.”
• When applying to work at a children’s shelter, “My weakness is kids.”