Should I add personality to my resume?


The workplace is changing. Now, company culture is king. Companies try extremely hard to find candidates that will fit within their specific, unique work culture. Most job seekers are afraid to put any kind of personality on their resume for fear of lacking professionalism. However, recruiters and HR professionals agree that showing some personality on your resume is okay — as long as you do not get carried away.

There are three ways to bring your personality to your resume:

  1. Infuse your personalityThis allows the reader to get to know you just by the way you haveve written your resume. While it definitely makes a statement about you and your personality, it can come across as unprofessional in many industries. If you have doubts about your industry accepting a personality-infused resume, it’s better to not head this direction.

  2. Describe your personalityWhen writing about your work or education experience, show which personality traits were used in your achievements. “Grew sales 13% by targeting homeowner’s associations” becomes “Built friendships with homeowner's association managers and grew sales 13%.” This can be helpful, but it can also start to get long to read. Make sure you choose which points to describe personality on carefully.

  3. Define your personalityA personality section lists words that describe you. When selecting the personality traits that best describe you, try to think what your friends or colleagues would say about you. The purpose is to give a unique picture of who you are and how you fit into a company. There is no “right” answer.

For most industries, a traditional resumes should go easy on the personality. The best practice is to include a little bit of personality on the traditional resume and more personality on your professional online profile.

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