When a recruiter or hiring manager is looking at your resume, they are typically looking at it for around 6 seconds before making a decision to continue reading and/or contacting you to set up an interview.

Because we live in a world of 250 characters and 6-second resume scans, it's vital that you get to the point quickly on your resume.

So you need to eliminate "fluff" on your resume. So what is fluff? Fluff is anything on your resume that is implied or unnecessary. This isn't content or soft skills - I typically see fluff on a resume in the descriptive content that most people have.

An example:

"Directly responsible for all operations in accounting and finance including P&L, budgeting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and vendor management."

The fluff in this sentence is "Directly responsible for…"

It's three unneeded words. It seems small, but if you're doing it at one point in your resume you're probably doing it elsewhere. So you have to get to the point quicker!

Instead remove the fluff and say "Direct accounting and finance operations including…" and get to the point. Obviously (or maybe not obviously) you want to give scale and add the numbers behind the P&L and budget, but that's another conversation.

Ironically, I mostly see fluff on executive resumes and those looking to move into director or higher level positions. It might sound higher level to say "Directly responsible for" but at the end of the day we already know!

If you need some help removing fluff from your resume, head over to the Professional Profile Services page and see how Post Up Careers can help you develop an eye-catching resume that gets read for more than 6 seconds.