Avoid These 7 Resume Writing Mistakes

Your C.V. is the place where you want to be sure to get everything right. Mistakes happen, but unfortunately, some errors are costlier than others. Your resume is your first impression put to paper, so you’ll want to spend the necessary time and effort to make it stand out from the rest. 

A bad resume tells hiring managers that the person who wrote it isn’t qualified for the job. You can take all the time in the world to prepare your application, but it won’t do you any good if you make obvious, avoidable mistakes. 

Thankfully, you don’t have to worry about these oversights any longer. The following points will show you a few of the most common resume writing mistakes that hiring managers see. Keep these close to mind when you’re polishing up your resume, and you’ll be much more likely to book job interviews.

1. Unwieldy Resumes

Hiring managers get a flood of applications for every position they advertise. With so many submissions to review, they can only devote an average of 15 seconds to each one. If your resume doesn’t catch their interest within this window, your chances of landing an interview are slim. 

An unwieldy resume won’t do you any favors in this regard. You need to condense your qualifications and experience to less than two pages. This makes it easier for hiring managers to see your strengths at a glance.

2. Irrelevant Objectives

When it comes to cutting extraneous information out of your resume, consider revisiting your objective statement. Some hiring managers want to see a well-written summary—a good one can even serve as your elevator pitch, helping you stand out from the crowd.

That being said, no one wants to see a statement of purpose that has nothing to do with the job at hand. Make your objective relevant or don’t include it at all.

3. Using Too Many Keywords

Hiring managers often use screening software to scour applications faster. These programs seek out relevant keywords and promote submissions that use them. As a result, many job seekers include as many of these phrases as possible in their resumes. 

This tactic usually works until hiring managers actually read the applications the software chooses. Overloaded resumes will often seem nonsensical, and they’ll be discarded quickly. Remember that you need to write for a human audience while still including enough keywords to make it through the screening process.

4. Obvious Typos

Typos contradict every claim you make on your resume. You may claim that you’re a careful, detail-oriented professional, but every spelling mistake says otherwise. These errors undermine your credibility faster than anything, so make sure you proofread your resume thoroughly before submitting it. After all, one missed keystroke could cost you your dream job.

5. Vague Accomplishments

Resume writing is all about showing how you helped your previous employers succeed. Everything you include should demonstrate your impact on that firm. Use clear metrics to show the value of your work. Hiring managers may not care that you designed a new component, but they will if you tell them it saved your company a specific amount of money and helped it reach a looming deadline.

6. False Information

Lying on your resume is bad news. While this seems like common sense, you’d be surprised how many professionals go a little too far in talking themselves up or exaggerating their skills and experience. Hiring managers don’t take kindly to these tactics, and they’ll usually dismiss any candidate who gets caught stretching the truth. It’s better to be honest if you want to keep your job prospects and your reputation intact. Let your honest skills and experience shine!

7. Generic Qualifications

Your resume needs to tell hiring managers that you’d make a better employee than your competition. But how are you supposed to stand apart from the other applicants if you list the exact same qualifications? Your C.V. should show how your skills make you uniquely suited to a given job. In concise terms, you need to demonstrate how each of your abilities would be an asset in your given role.

For more advice and tips on this topic check these related blogs:

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