Or maybe you’re the only one on your team who can whip up a memorable PowerPoint presentation. Maybe you can work Excel pivot tables like nobody’s business. If you shook hands with someone during a job interview, you wouldn’t tell them one of your biggest skills is the ability to shake hands.” DO include programs where you have expert-level knowledge.Ī few individual Microsoft programs - and certain capabilities within those programs - do deserve a nod. “You wouldn’t list the ability to type in a resume that you typed. “Listing Microsoft Word as a skill should be removed from every resume,” says Andrew Selepak, a communications expert and professor at the University of Florida. No need to call attention to a program most middle-schoolers can handle. You wrote your resume using some sort of word processing software, right? It stands to reason that you have a baseline knowledge of the most popular one out there. The only thing worse than using "Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite" as a stand-in for, you know, actual skills is using "Microsoft Word" instead. DON'T list Microsoft Word on your resume. Here are a few resume dos and dont's to keep in mind. But there are better ways to brag about your skills than relying on a stale catchall term. This is not to disparage the entire Microsoft suite of programs, nor its users: Expertise in some Microsoft tools, such as Excel, OneNote, or PowerPoint, can be attractive to recruiters. "If a client seriously told me she was going to write 'proficient in MS Office Suite' on her resume, I’d ask her, 'Why stop there? Can you also use a knife and fork?'" "In 2018, if you’re attempting to get a job, the presumption will be that you are computer literate," says career consultant Carlota Zimmerman. It might even throw you out of the running. But padding your resume with "skills" shared by everyone with an office job signals to employers that you actually don't have any skills at all. This string of seemingly innocuous words sunk its hooks into the job seeker's lexicon years ago, and remains a resume staple to this day-and for no good reason. “Proficient in the Microsoft Office Suite.”
Ask a room full of hiring managers which resume cliche is most likely to make their eyes roll back in their heads, and they’ll probably all give you the same line: