7 Resume Rules to Break

Raise your hand if you have been personally victimized by resume advice on the internet.

There are so many experts giving so many tips and tricks, but for neurodivergents who take things literally, these rules might create conflicts and anxiety loops in your brain instead of helping you streamline your job application process.

So let’s break the rules together.

Rule 1: Include every detail

Subtext: Include only relevant details

A lot of the details on your resume are irrelevant—and instead of feeling bad, please let this free you from the burden of trying to fit your entire life story onto a page.

The longer your list of experience, the more choosy you can be about what makes it to the resume. Here are some quick and dirty tips to get the ball rolling:

• Eliminate any bullet point that talks about work you don’t want to do again, even if you’re good at it.

• If it’s a job from more than a decade ago, it can go. You’re allowed to keep it if it’s truly relevant to the job you want, but if you need permission to cut old stuff, please claim that permission now.

• You don’t need your graduation year or GPA from high school or college, unless you’re applying to a graduate program that needs this information, or you’re a recent graduate with more academic experience than work history.

• The older the job, the fewer the bullet points. Reduce jobs more than 5 years old down to 2-3 bullet points per work experience, or even a simple list of titles and dates if you need the space.

Rule 2: Keep it to one page

Subtext: Keep it relevant and readable

The advice to keep your resume to a single page can help you pare down irrelevant info and streamline the work you’re highlighting, but for folks who have freelanced, pivoted career tracks, or simply done a lot of work, keeping it down to one page isn’t necessary.

The key is that everything included on your resume should be relevant to the application, and you need to have a readable format with adequate white space.

If this takes two pages, then take two pages.

If your resume is one page plus two or three lines, do your best to tidy it up so it fits on one page. Try to shoot for at least a page and a half if you’re going over the single page norm.

A special note: Artists, graphic designers, and other creatives have a lot more wiggle room to craft an artistic resume that showcases their style. It’s still a good idea to have a standardized, “plain” document in case of automated systems–but bring the pretty one to the interview or include it on your LinkedIn or portfolio page.

Rule 3: List your work in chronological order

Subtext: Show your career progress in an understandable way

General resume advice to list your work in reverse chronological order (most recent first, oldest last) is solid—but not always the right move, especially for a career pivot.

If your career has mostly been in one industry and you’re moving into another, it’s okay to start off with a Relevant Experience section that includes the experience most relevant to the job you’re applying for, followed by another Other Work Experience section where you can list things in chronological order.

This may also be called a “functional” resume format, which emphasizes skills over work history.

Rule 4: Include your (paid) work history

Subtext: Show the building blocks that got you here

If volunteer work, academic projects, or other unpaid experience has helped lead you to this place in your career journey, don’t you dare discount it!

You can include any experience that showcases your skills, passion, and interests, regardless of whether it was “professional” experience or not. Professionalism is made up, anyway.

Some examples of awesome things our clients have tried to leave off their resumes:

• Organizing and maintaining a Pokémon league (aka ten years of community management and outreach experience, hello?)

• Being the author of a blog that led to a book deal (excuse me, you mean consistent editorial planning, content writing, and managing a publishing relationship?)

• Leading the digitization of a video game library for an easier checkout process at an annual convention (sounds like an impressive tech project imo)

Don’t just think about what a manager wants to see… think about what you are really good at and what you enjoy doing.

Rule 5: Include an objective

Subtext: Tell them why you’re a catch

Objectives are out—you want a job because you need money to live. Let’s stop pretending that “working in an organization that values my skillset where I can find upward mobility” is a powerful statement to make.

Instead of an objective statement, start your resume off with a Summary section that includes the best highlights from your experience, your most important skills, and a point or two about the length of your experience and any special sauce you bring to the table.

It’s okay to include things in the summary that you also list elsewhere–in fact, it can be helpful for the reader/employer to read that impressive bullet point twice. Change up the wording a little so it’s not a straight copy-paste. (Need help? We love doing this for our clients to put their best foot forward!)

Rule 6: Tailor your resume to each application

Subtext: Have different resumes for different industries or roles

You absolutely should tailor your resume, but if this process takes longer than 15-20 minutes per application, you need to move way back in the timeline and start by creating a few tailored resumes to start from.

For example, you might have enough career experience to look for jobs in the publishing industry, a special interest in animal husbandry backed up by years of volunteering, and a passion for a cause you believe in. This means you should have three resumes—a publishing resume, an animal resume, and a cause/values-based resume.

THEN you can tailor each of these base resumes with specific verbiage from the job descriptions before you send them off.

If you’re basically starting from scratch every time, baby what are you doing?

Rule 7: Include a cover letter

Subtext: Be prepared to provide context

Good news and bad news. Cover letters are on the decline, so you can unclench. The bad news is that this is largely due to automations and AI in the hiring process, which is a bummer because the things that make you stand out may not necessarily catch the eye of a robot looking for keywords.

If a job description doesn’t specifically ask for a cover letter, don’t write one.

Regardless of your cover letter, you should prepare to add context to the bullet points on your resume during the interview process, so you’re not totally off the hook when it comes to communicating your accomplishments verbally.

The STAR (or STARL) method is useful for interviewing and for helping keep your cover letter relevant and concise. Candidates who use the STAR method in interviews are 2.6x more likely to be hired compared to those who don’t use this method, according to a Glassdoor study.

• Situation: Explain the context briefly.

• Task: Outline your responsibility in the situation.

• Action: Describe what you did and how you handled it.

• Result: Share the outcome.

• Learning: Reflect on what you learned and what you do differently now.

Note: If you actually enjoy cover letters, write away. We’re not stopping you unless you want to be stopped.

What’s next?

Get 1on1 coaching from a neurodivergent, queer, experienced career coach who has been through the same challenges. Learn about our signature coaching programs here or hit us up for a Resume and LinkedIn Review to make sure you’re not getting stuck on any of these “rules.”