5 Common Resume Mistakes To Avoid

perfect resume

This day and age, with the competition for select positions on the line, the last thing you need is for your resume to have any mistakes that could cost you the position you applied for. Whether it’s your first resume or a mid-career change with these 5 tips your resume will be a professional representation of your skills

Watch your spelling and grammar mistakes

Read through your resume at least once. Nothing is worse than finding grammatical errors or simple misspellings in your finished resume that could have been avoided. Also, make sure you are adding action verbs as this makes more descriptive reading that highlights what skills you have acquired.

Ex. “Responsible for customer service” is very generic sounding whereas; “resolved customer complaints in a quick fashionable manner and answered customer IT questions” sounds more professional.

Lack of specifics, highlighting your duties and too short/too long issues

All these play in together. Let’s look at how. There is no use in doing a resume if you’re not going to get down the specifics. The resume could be your only shot at getting your foot in the door with employers sometimes.  Why waste the time an effort of writing a resume if you’re not going to promote yourself.

Yes I know it’s much simpler to write out your duties than it is your accomplishments but you want the prospective employer to want to add you to his workforce. This means highlighting the accomplishments instead of the duties. They want action statements surrounding your skills such as;

  • Used laptop to record weekly meeting minutes and compiled notes in a Google.doc and added file to the cloud for future organizational reference.

Instead of

  • Attended mandatory weekly meetings and recorded minutes.

Another issue found in a lot of resumes is the ones that are so narrowly defined or seem to go on for paragraphs. Let’s face it, a half page is not enough and a 5 page report is way too much. Prospective employers need concise statements. The average resume should only be one to two pages long. Any more than this is unnecessary. You want your resume to be a positive reflection of your overall skills and accomplishments.

Attempting a One Size Fits All resume

If your just putting out a non-specific resume to get a job because it’s convenient, chances are no employer will hire you less they are a quick turn around emloyer and just interested in a warm body. Most employers will discard a generic resume. They want one that details skills and accomplishments that reflect their business. So research your prospective career a bit.

Leaving off Important information or incorrect contact info

You may be tempted to not include jobs or skills you’ve acquired while in school or volunteering. This is a mistake. Doing so may cripple your chances.  These soft skills are an asset to employers.

Make sure that the contact info is correct and current so should the employer consider you further, they can get a hold of you.

Bad Objectives and Visually Busy Resumes

Every resume asks for an objective. Here is where you can hook the employer to read your resume further by using a concise and detailed statement on what you hope to accomplish with this employer. This is not the time to do a generic statement.

Another issue people have is falling victim to the font features on the computer. Having a different font throughout the entire resume looks too busy and will distract the employer.  You want the employer to be able to scan the resume quickly and find the accomplishments and skills that the employer is looking at to encourage consideration for a future interview. Use one font throughout. The last thing you want to do is give the employer a headache.

These are just a few of the simple tips and tricks to make your resume go to the top of the pile. They are proven to help make sure your resume is the best it can be regardless of your past job history.

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