Looking for a new job, whether you are employed or not, can be a daunting challenge. Job hunting, like buying a car or home, is only done occasionally and things can change dramatically from the last time you undertook this task. Whether you are new to the job market or an experienced job hunter, crafting a well-written resume is a key part of presenting yourself in a professional manner and impressing hiring authorities. I have reviewed thousands of resumes, both as a recruiter/owner of a franchised recruiting firm and also as a hiring manager in industry. I am shocked and dismayed at how many resumes I review that have errors and are poorly written. As a job hunter you need to avoid these five common errors:
Typos & Grammatical Errors
One of the most common errors, and the one that most hiring authorities won’t forgive, is to have typos and grammatical errors on your resume! Typos are a huge sin, especially with the spellchecking capabilities of all document creation software. What happens when you don’t spell check and have management spelled management (missing second a) on your resume? The person reading it sees the typo and assumes that you are careless and don’t have good attention to detail since spell checking is easy to do. Your resume is discarded in a heartbeat! Grammatical errors are sometimes more difficult to detect, especially with words like there, their and they’re. You need to pay special attention to these. One way to check your resume is to read it out loud and see if you detect errors. Another way is to check each word reading your resume backwards from the bottom to the top. That way you are paying attention to each word.
Too Wordy / Too Long a Resume
Resume length is important. If you have less than 5 years experience your resume should be one page. If you have more than 5 years experience two pages is the maximum length. The purpose of your resume is to generate enough interest in you as a candidate for a hiring authority to want to have a conversation (interview) with you, either in person or remotely. Your resume should not detail every aspect of your career, especially if you have many years of experience. Focus on your most recent jobs and accomplishments and summarize earlier experiences
Focusing Only on Job Responsibilities & Not Job Accomplishments
It is common for job hunters to only list their job responsibilities, but it is critical that you also put real accomplishments that you can substantiate on your resume. Employers want to know both what you did and what you accomplished – – – be specific and be ready to discuss.
Creative Resume Formats and Fonts
Unless you are in a creative position like graphic design you should use a standard resume template and font. For example, fonts like Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, and Verdana are common and readable. Odd fonts or custom created fonts are unusual and highlight you, but spotlight you not in a good way. Keep it simple and clean.
Personal Information
Including information on your marital status, children, hobbies, political affiliation, religion, etc. is distracting and uncalled for and again highlights you in a negative way. Don’t do it! There are plenty of other resume killing errors, but the five above are among the most common.
If you wish to contact me directly, here is my email address MarkL@jumpuptheladder.com
Grammatical errors can be fatal! Mark, you helped me consolidate my overly lengthy and detailed resume into a much more svelte form that immediately got me more results in 4 weeks than I had had in 4 months, thank you!
Emma, You are very welcome! Once you understood how your resume had to effectively address the needs of both the Recruiter and the Hiring Team , and had a template and process to do so, you were able to create that high impact resume that got you great results! My process works, you do the work and then you get back to working! Thanks for your comment!
Mark did a great service in helping me trim my resume to focus on what is critical to attract recruiters and hiring managers. As a candidate, you believe all your accomplishments are important, but really the resume becomes so much more readable and engaging when there is significantly less of it. Mark, Thank you for your resume building insight.