It’s true that everyone makes mistakes, but making them on your resume can have drastic consequences. There’s perhaps no better time to be meticulous and detail-oriented than while drafting your resume. After all, it’s the first impression a potential employer gets of you. You might be well-spoken and a perfectly capable speller, but if you make a careless typing slip-up on your resume that won’t matter much to an HR professional. They’ll simply think you either don’t know how to spell or don’t have the good sense to review your resume for mistakes.
Anyone who has had success with their resume can tell you that when it comes to landing jobs, there’s no room for error - your future’s on the line. Here are five resume mistakes and how you can avoid them:
Typos
So you’ve created an excellent resume and sent it off to the hiring manager at your dream company, when you suddenly notice you accidentally left an “s” out of “professional.” Oh well, no big deal, right? Wrong. That error might seem insignificant to you, but it will probably cause the HR professional to head straight for the “delete” button. If you were careless enough to misspell a word on your resume, why should they trust you with handling critical work at their company?
How to avoid it – Review, review, review. Look over your resume as many times as it takes to make sure there are absolutely no typos. Remember, sometimes automatic spell checks overlook errors. If necessary, get friends or family to review it, too.
Too Long
There’s no need for an overblown, overly-lengthy resume. HR professionals are inundated with applications and probably don’t have time to read through a resume that reads more like a novel. There’s no official right answer when it comes to resume length, but most hiring mangers prefer no longer than two pages. If you are highly experienced and simply can’t fit everything you need to communicate on two pages, going over can be justified, but there should be very good reason.
How to avoid it – Limit the experience you list to roles that are actually relevant to the position you’re seeking. If you want to land a job as a reporter, you can safely eliminate the details of your past sales associate position at The Gap. If you’ve been in the workforce many years, you’ll probably want to limit the positions you include to the past 15 years. Going over that could not only make your resume too long, but also expose you to age discrimination.
Bad Layout & Structure
You might have fantastic information on your resume, but if it’s not presented in a visually-appealing way, it probably won’t land you a job. Ask any HR professional, and they’ll tell likely tell you they receive no shortage of poorly-designed resumes. They’ll also probably confess that they don’t give them much more than a quick glance.
How to avoid it – Make sure you give your resume a clean, clearly-structured, easy-to-read layout. Use separated sections and bullet points to neatly outline your accomplishments. Don’t list your information in complete sentences, but rather partial sentences that actively communicate your accomplishments (for example, “Managed team of salespeople”). BriteTab allows you to quickly and easily create visually-appealing resumes online with standard, eye-catching templates.
Including the Wrong Information
One of the most common resume mistakes is including information that hiring managers don’t care about. Do you participate in a fencing club on the weekends? That’s great, but it doesn’t belong on your resume. You shouldn’t include hobbies or other information that is not directly related to your ability to perform in the job you’re applying for. There’s also no need to include details about your educational background (graduation date and GPA, for example) unless you’re a new graduate. No numbers, old/college information, hobbies, lack of details about what you did in positions
How to avoid it – As you draft your resume, look over every bit of information and ask yourself if it is relevant to the position you’d like to secure. Keep only the information that would prove to hiring managers that you would be a good candidate to consider. It helps to include numbers in relation to job history (the time span that you worked at a company, the amount of sales or company growth you had a hand in) and enough details about the tasks you accomplished to give employers a sufficient sense of your abilities.
Doesn’t Make an Impression
Even if you couldn’t be more qualified for a specific position that you’ve submitted your resume to, the harsh reality is that there’s a good chance it might never even be reviewed. Hiring managers get so many resumes – and so many of them look the same – that many of them can’t possibly review them all. That’s why it’s becoming increasingly important not to have a resume that lacks “pop.”
How to avoid it – Online resumes with eye-catching designs and added enhancements such as photos or videos can prevent your submission from getting lost in the crowd. BriteTab is dedicated to helping job seekers stand out with attractive online resumes that allow applicants to better show their personalities and demonstrate why they’re the right person for the job.
