Resume Evaluation: Clarity

This is one of series of articles being written by Alpha Dog Resumes.com explaining how the online resume writing service evaluates the thousands of resumes that are sent to it each year.

One of the ten criteria that is reviewed is Clarity.  The resume is given a score of 1 to 5, with 5 being the highest score.

A score of 3 or lower indicates that a number of elements in your resume should be made clearer.  Do sections and paragraphs confuse the reader?  Is it unclear what you really did in a job?  Are your sentences and phrases so long and rambling that even experts in your field must diagram those sentences and phrases to arrive at their meanings?

Here’s an example.  What does the following sentence really say?

“Providing unique, valuable tactical and strategic legal expertise and business advice, while generating hundreds of millions of dollars of fees and other revenues, as a result of closing billions of dollars of complex commercial finance transactions are activities which reflect my years of extensive experience in the corporate and public finance legal arena.”

Read “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser, and you will appreciate the importance of clarity.  People like simple writing.