If you have been looking recently to update your resume, you have probably come across numerous resume templates, all looking more modern, vibrant, beautiful and colorful than the next. These highly trendy visual, sometimes even infographic looking, resume templates became mainstream when graphic designers started creating these templates, seeing some people taking interest in giving their resumes a visual spin and making them look as good as a magazine ad. These templates are for sure more and more popular, but are they worth all the hype? Are they worth spending a few bucks on? Are they even worth using? The short answer is that in most situations and for the vast majority of people, you should just stay away from these trendy design inspired templates. Trend Alert: Skills Bar Charts One thing these advertising worthy resume templates usually have in common is that they often use skills bar charts, sometimes called skills progression or progress charts or graphs. The following examples of resume templates, taken from Microsoft Office Word’s online resume templates , showcase these skills charts. Often, you will see these skills charts displayed with a scale of small colored circles or sometimes they will take the shape of pie charts. It looks good. But is it any good? No. It is important to communicate in your resume which skills you possess that are related to the job position that interests you, both soft skills and hard skills. And it is also highly important to communicate your strengths in regard to these skills so that a future employer can have an understanding of how you will perform down the road if they hire you. They need to have a clear picture of your skills and their levels… but colored dots in a row does not paint that clear picture, it only brings confusion, meaninglessness and superficiality. These self-rating scales on your resume showcase not your skills, but instead can highlight inaccuracies and biases. Not exactly what you want to communicate to an employer. Poor Self-Assessment For most people, self-evaluating their own performance, competences and skills is flawed and inaccurate, because it is simply a highly difficult thing to do in an objective manner. How objective can one really be about themselves? More often than not, someone's perception of their abilities and performance is far removed from reality. Most people simply don't have an accurate vision of themselves. And in the event where someone would have the ability to objectively and accurately rate themselves, how could an employer know this or in any case trust this self-rating information on their resume to be precise and reliable? A lot, if not most people would tend to increase their self-evaluation in order to make themselves look good, to stand out and to not miss out on the chance of securing a great job. Employers and their HR recruitment staff are no fools. They see right through this. Rating Scales and Criteria As shown in the examples above, these ski