Have you ever applied for a job you were certain of clinching, but after several weeks of waiting in vain for the life-changing call, you start asking yourself some self-reflecting questions? After all, the job description perfectly matched your profile. “Something must have gone wrong somewhere”, you thought.
What if something about your resume does not click with the job, even though you have the best of skills and experience?
In the course of my job as a recruiter over the years, I have seen cases of highly qualified candidates who have burnt their fingers and lost the opportunity for even the first interview, just because of some costly error they had made in their resume. Your resume is like your collateral for a loan. The value placed on it will determine whether you will be prequalified for the next stage.
The fact is that less than 50% of those who apply for a job are pretty ignorant of what is expected of them in their resume. As a result, they make some costly and deadly mistakes that terminate their job quest from the word go. The following are ten resume errors I will implore you to avoid at all costs.
1. A resume without a career summary
A resume that lacks a career summary is a pain in the neck of the resume screener. In a few lines, a good resume should tell the recruiter what you have done in the past, the skills and qualifications you have gathered over the years and what you can bring to the table in this new job. That is the essence of a career summary, which a good number of people fail to provide as the first and most important item on their resume.
2. Focusing on responsibilities instead of achievements
Resume experts and HR professionals will tell you that they prefer to see what you have achieved on your last job and not what you are currently doing by way of everyday responsibilities. Rest assured, thousands of people applying for the same job with you are performing the same or similar job functions as you. The only mark of difference will be what significant and quantifiable achievements you can boast of on your current and past jobs. Every hiring manager looks forward to see your track record and not your boring, routine tasks, which every Tom, Dick and Harry also perform.
For instance, your resume should have more of things like: “Reduced over-head costs by 45% percent within three months of taking over the role of facilities manager”, "Improved customer satisfaction by a factor of two after six months of analyzing results from a customer satisfaction survey", and less of things like “monitor the movement of company property”, “oversee stock-taking in all district warehouses”.
3. Badly formatted resumes
There is nothing as damaging as a badly formatted resume. A poorly written resume is a reflection of the quality of the writer. An experienced recruiter will not give you the opportunity for an interview, if he sees that you lack basic microsoft skills, for instance. In this age of paperless communication, it is expected that you have basic formatting skills, as this is a critical part of most jobs. An employer that sees this deficiency in your resume might as well refuse to risk hiring someone who will start learning computer basics when hired.
4. Listing irrelevant experiences or skills
Many applicants, out of ignorance, are in a hurry to impress the recruiter with information that end up backfiring. As much as possible, be formal. Let every information you provide be related in some way to the job you are seeking. You don’t want the HR guy to read a litany of vacations you have taken, the hobbies you enjoy, the number of children you have and so on. While it is good to spice up your resume, do it reasonably. The reviewer of your resume has so many other resumes to skim through and only needs what will boost your eligibility.
5. Relegating critical skills to the background
Your resume may be immediately consigned to the dustbin of history, if your prospective employer does not conspicuously see what relevant and critical skills you have from a first glance of your resume. That is the more reason why you should study the job description very well and craft a mouth-watering skills summary that will immediately turn on the interest of the recruiter. This section must come immediately after your profile summary.
6. Wordiness and verbiage
Recruiters hate to scan through resumes that make so much noise. In most cases, the more you words you use the more nonsense you tend to say and the more you piss off the recruiter. As much as possible make your resume reader friendly by hitting the nail on the head. Your recruiter wants to see precise and concise details and not some boring tale of your life’s history.
7. Sending your resume straight to the recruiter
The computer is not perfect, neither is the internet flawless. I once sent my resume to a friend of mine, who was going to help me forward it to his contacts to help with job opportunities. Low and behold! The resume I had painstakingly formatted had been greatly distorted by the time it got to his inbox. If I were to receive such resume as a recruiter, I would not look at it twice before I delete it off my system. The more reason why you should always send your resume to a friend’s email and check it out there for any distortions before you finally send it to your recruiter.
8. Listing references in your resume
Never make the mistake of providing your references in your resume. It is no one’s business until you get the job. Do not even say things like “to be provided on request”. Your employer would definitely request for them when you get the job. Remove such redundancies from your resume.
9. The use of personal pronouns
As much as possible, avoid the use of the ‘I’ or ‘We’ pronoun. Instead of saying “I am a dedicated software engineer with proven ability to deliver quality output’, say “A dedicated software engineer with proven ability to deliver quality output”. Instead of saying: “I coordinated the creation of a new department that generated $10 million in sales and increased profits by 22%, say: Oversaw the creation of new department that generated $10 million in sales and increased profits by 22%.
10. Using inappropriate email address
The email address you use for your job search speaks volume of you. When sending your resume for a job, avoid using informal, obscene and inappropriate email ids. Using an email address like ‘badguyintown22@yahoo.com’, will surely terminate your job search from inception. Use your informal addresses for informal campaigns, but not for job applications.
I’ll end this piece by urging you to see your resume as your advocate and mouth piece before the court of resume scrutiny. Recruitment experts are trained to see even the most trivial and seemingly immaterial blunders. Take your time before you send in your resume for any job. Dot your i’s and cross your t’s; have a second eye reviewer, preferably an HR person to critique your resume before you send it out. Very soon, you will hear the calls coming in torrents, inviting you for interviews.
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