Even if you are lyrical and diabolical; have the unique ability to palliate a problem; or if your Thanksgiving dinner is one of your family’s eleemosynary events – you probably don’t want to use really BIG words on your resume (or, for that matter, Acronyms that only you and another insider can really understand: “SARS” or “SCUBA” et. al.)
The point? A resume should be written so that ANYONE who touches it can read and understand what is being said. Your vocabulary skills can best be demonstrated orally when you get the interview.
Professional writers use the “Flesch-Kincade” reading skill test to determine if a document reads at an appropriate grade level and, honestly, most résumés should test out at about the 5th to 6th grade comprehension level.
Why?
Because the audience you need to impress includes the person in the mailroom, the clerk in Human Resources, and that powerful of all powerful – the gatekeeper of the actual hiring authority. Alone the line, if any of these readers simply cannot understand what you are trying to say, they will typically just file the résumé away and it will never get to the desk of the actual person who will do the interviewing and hiring.
