5 Outdated Resume Rules That No Longer Apply in 2022

In 2021, the average job opening attracted 250 resumes. In order to stand out, your resume can’t look exactly like the other 249 applicants. Infusing your personality throughout your resume is more important now than ever before. This approach goes against some of the outdated resume “rules” that many people still use. 

Now in 2022, it’s time to rethink the way resumes have been written in the past and take a modern approach to resume development. Although there are still many “rules” that are tried and true, some of these no longer apply to today’s job market. We’ve put together a list of 5 resume rules that may no longer serve you in 2022. 

Including entrepreneurial experience or “side gigs” used to be a big no-no on a resume. 

Hiring managers used to view “side gigs” or entrepreneurial endeavors outside of work as a possible distraction that would take an employee's focus away from their job. 

In 2022, with the ever-expanding gig economy, companies are changing the way they view entrepreneurial work. Now, many companies are realizing that employing someone with the drive and work ethic to take on multiple projects is actually an asset. They also realize that someone who has successfully built a company or managed freelance work outside of their career is typically great at time management and problem-solving. 

We often see words such as “entrepreneurial” listed on job descriptions as a quality a company is looking for in an employee. This is a new trend. Before the gig economy, companies typically didn’t want to hire someone entrepreneurial, they wanted someone who could come in and follow the rules as they are laid out. 

If you’re someone who likes to solve problems, improve systems, and think outside the box, you won’t want to work with companies that want to stay stagnant. Instead, you should align yourself with companies that are ready to innovate so you can put your true skills to work! 

At Elevated Resumes, we believe that a professional design can make all the difference when it comes to that crucial first impression! There are four main things that recruiters and hiring managers look for in the resume scanning stage: work experience, education, skill set, and personality. Most people include the first three but are missing the last one. Your resume should tell your story, so customize it to you! This is where a great design can help create a holistic picture of you as a professional. 

ATS programs are getting smarter, too. Most of the options on the market today can interpret appropriately-designed resumes. Even if you don’t apply with a designed resume through an online system, we encourage you to follow up with your designed resume via email or to bring it with you to the interview. 

A Jobvite social recruiting survey found that 93 percent of recruiters will search for your online profiles before they decide to interview you. Knowing this, we recommend saving the recruiter some time by including the URL to your LinkedIn profile or other social media handles if applicable. 

For example, if you are a graphic designer that shares a lot of your work through a professional Instagram account, it is perfectly acceptable (and even encouraged) to include your Instagram handle on your resume. Since most resumes are submitted digitally, linking your social media or a personal website to your resume will make it that much easier for a recruiter or hiring manager to spend more time reviewing and evaluating your work rather than searching for the information you would like them to see. 

A study that involved almost 500 recruiters, hiring managers,  HR professionals and nearly 8,000 resumes, discovered that recruiters are 2.3 times as likely to prefer two-page resumes over one-page resumes, regardless of a candidate's job level. 

If you have more than 10 years of experience, a two-page resume is extremely common and expected. Remember, white space is your friend! If you find yourself using size 8 or 9 point font to cram a whole bunch of content onto one page, it will be very difficult to read and even harder to find the specific information that a recruiter or hiring manager is looking for. If you do choose a two-page format, be sure to keep the most crucial information on page one.

Outdated Rule #5: Don’t add visuals

65% of the population are visual learners and 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. Furthermore, visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text. 

This means that the majority of people looking at your resume learn and retain information best through images, yet most resumes use only text. 

Adding visuals to communicate data, career history, skills, and other information to your resume can give you a huge advantage. 

Resumes are changing fast. Not only are we starting to see things like video resumes, digital portfolios, and social media applications popping up, but traditional resumes are also becoming more modern to suit today’s work environment. With the advancement of millennials into hiring roles, job seekers will need to tailor their resumes to fit the preferences of this demographic. With shorter attention spans and a stronger preference for visuals and design thanks to social media, resumes not only need to demonstrate your value through text but also need to impress the reader with a clean and professional design to be noticed.