By | Lauren Hamer | www.themuse.com
We’ve all been there. You spot the job description for an awesome role and see some pretty basic requirements listed. You thought it went without saying these days that you could handle those things; but since they’re written down, you figure that you should probably throw them on your resume, too—just so there’s no doubt about what you can do. And you do it without thinking twice.
And that’s where you go wrong. Those basic skills aren’t listed there as a test to make sure you’re paying attention, but rather because they’re not as basic as you might think.
Take these three for example—you and the hiring manager probably have very different ideas of what they entail when they’re included in your resume’s skill section.
1. Microsoft Office
Sometimes listed as “proficient in Microsoft Office,” “fluent in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint,” you’ve had this on your resume since Day 1, and you’ve got no plans to take it off now.
You Think it Means
Duh, I know how to type up a Word doc, insert rows in Excel, and add sweet animations to an otherwise boring slide presentation in PowerPoint.
