Are you someone who includes subjective descriptions of your skills, personal attributes or competencies on your resume? If so this post is for you.

How many people do you think would describe themselves as any one of the following?

Great team player
Strong communicator
Great leader
High integrity

The answer is pretty much everyone. The funny thing is that I have met very few actual team players in my professional life so when someone lists “great team player” on a resume I automatically skip over that statement and look for something that is backed up by verifiable metrics.

When you look at as many resumes as recruiters (both in-house and headhunters) do every day you tend to discount the subjective statements that you see on most resumes. So, even though you may have high integrity and you might be a strong team player there is just no point in listing that information on your resume unless you can back it up with some kind of meaningful description or, better yet, metrics.

For example, if you want to demonstrate that you are a team player or a strong team leader you could write something like this:

Led a team of 10 engineers to develop a software product (better to name the product) from concept to launch in seven months; project completed two months ahead of schedule. The product has generated $5 million in revenue to date.

When I read that statement I think to myself, “OK, this person might be a legitimate team player because he/she was able to lead a successful collaborative and complex development project. How do I know it was successful? Because the project was completed ahead of schedule and has generated revenue for the company. You could make this even stronger if you included ROI or indicate that revenue exceeded projections.

More examples, these related to communication skills:

Increased employee morale by 10% within six months by leading fully integrated internal communications efforts utilizing a newly launched employee web portal, newsletters, and town hall meetings.

Managed a media relations campaign to launch a new community development program and which garnered media coverage in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist.

A lot of resumes also contain lists of “core competencies”. An example of a list of core competencies that I have seen on a resume:

Marketing, Public Relations, Brand Management, Business Development, Sales.

What does this list mean? Are you good at marketing or did you take a class one time? Are you an expert at public relations? If so, give me an example of a campaign you led. Are you a good brand manager who can generate revenue through the sale of B2C products in major retail stores? If so, I want to talk to you. But just dropping a few words on a resume without putting them in context is useless because it doesn’t tell the reader anything about your level of skill or depth of experience. And that is what recruiters and hiring managers want to know about you.

Most recruiters have the same reaction to list of competencies as they do all other subjective information….they skip it. If you want a hiring manager to know that you are a skilled marketer you need to demonstrate that with clearly articulated accomplishments, not by just listing marketing at the top of your resume.

Other things to leave off your resume:

Personal statements/life philosophy
Religious beliefs
Information about your family
Hobbies

If you want your resume to be taken seriously you should only include work related information that you can back up with specific examples, preferably with metrics. Also, keep personal information to a minimum – you may think that if you mention that you are an avid quilter, a collector of model trains, or that you enjoy reading that you will personalize yourself for interviewers. However, that information just takes up space that would be better used to describe your accomplishments.

Having said that, if you have accomplished something that is truly world class it might be worth mentioning because everyone wants to hire a superstar. Some examples include: climbed Mount Everest, completed 10 Ironman Triathlons, or spent six months in Namibia volunteering with Doctors without Borders. However, I would recommend only including hobbies or activities you worked hard to accomplish and that demonstrate tenacity, intelligence, or perseverance.