Resume Help Blog

Employers and recruiters receive hundreds of resumes for every position they are trying to fill. To select their shortlist of candidates to interview, they look for the most common resume mistakes and eliminate them first. To increase your chances of getting an interview, make sure you avoid these common mistakes.

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Ten Resume Mistakes to Avoid

1. Multiple pages – You need to be concise. Keep it to one page and one page only. If you can’t highlight your talents on one page, you’re generally giving the message that you are unorganized and tend to go on and on. There are a few exceptions to this rule but generally speaking one page is best.

2. Fancy paper – If your skills don’t speak for themselves, then your fancy paper isn’t going to make a bit of difference.

3. Fancy font – Same as above. Don’t try to set yourself apart with a different font on your resume. Set yourself apart by being uniquely qualified. It’s a proven fact that normal fonts like Times Roman and Arial are easier to read and that strange fonts (like the script ones) cause a persons eyes to not move naturally over the text. If a person has to concentrate on what they are reading because of the script font then they will put it down and move onto another resume that’s easier to read.

4. Irrelevant info – No one really cares that you were a singing waiter if you’re applying for an accountant job.

5. Outdated information – Does it matter that you had a newspaper route and were on the high school cheerleading squad 24 years ago? Leave it off.

6. Typos and misspellings – You would think this is an obvious one, but you’d be amazed at the number of resumes received with big blaring mistakes. This can’t be stressed enough!

7. Falsified information -Greatly elaborated credentials are the same as lies. Do not list diplomas, certifications, affiliations or awards that you did not earn. Just don’t do it. Especially nowadays when employers are hiring “screening” firms to do background checks. They WILL call the colleges and institutions you say you went to and it’ll come back to bite you in the butt.

8. Attachments – At the resume stage do not send any attachments, whatsoever. If you are granted an interview, at that time you could bring in whatever it is you’re so hot to get into the selecting official’s hands. The person accepting the resumes will likely just throw it in the round file. So while letters of recommendation are nice, you are better off bringing them with you to the interview and NOT attaching them to the email or fax or electronic application.

9. Elaborating too much – Place of employment, job title and brief, very brief description of job responsibilities are all you need. Don’t complete a whole paragraph for each job you’ve held. Hold these for the job interview and be very prepared for that. Make sure that you include the “bragging” points. Things that brought value to your employer. Saving money, saving time, managing 100 people, etc. Nobody cares if you made fresh coffee every morning or fetched lunch for people (even if it WAS part of your job).

10. No cover letter – Writing a good cover letter is a bit of an art. However, any cover letter is better than none. Just keep the same principles in mind with your letter: Brevity, relevant and free from typos.

If you can avoid these ten simple resume mistakes, you’re more than half way there to getting an interview. Once you have your foot in the door you can really shine for the boss. If you don’t make it past the first cut, due to any of the above fatal mistakes, your beautiful resume will be used to wipe up coffee spills or will be added to the recycle pile! Don’t let that happen to you.

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