On another website I run, I give visitors the opportunity to submit their own career objective to my site and have me (and other visitors to the site) critique it to help them improve it.
The topic “Career Objective” is by far the most popular topic on this website by the way… I’m not sure why but it is! If you’re interested, here is one of the most popular pages on the subject.
Today I received a submission from someone who sent me a very generic Career Objective and in the section where they can add their desired Job Title, they simply put “BBA.”
I have absolutely no idea what kind of job BBA is and I simply don’t have the desire to Google search it and try to figure it out and I suspect most people reading this guy’s resume won’t bother either. In other words, he’s already turned them off by using an acronym that some/many/most people don’t know the meaning of.
Using short forms should also be avoided especially in formal documents like cover letters and resumes. Last week, I received a Career Objective submission from a woman who referred to herself as a “Sr. Business Analyst” instead of “Senior Business Analyst.” Saving a couple of keystrokes and typing Sr. instead of Senior just doesn’t look good and really doesn’t serve any purpose. Spell it out properly in full.
In your resume, cover letter and other correspondence with people who can influence your career, watch out when using industry jargon that not everyone is familiar with. Remember that it could be an HR person, a recruiter or even someone in your chosen line of business reading your resume who doesn’t know the acronyms but can still have an important hand in deciding your fate. If you swamp them with acronyms, they may not bother wasting time figuring out what they mean.
