9 Common Mistakes to avoid while writing your Resume

9 Mistakes to Avoid While Making Your Resume

A resume is a document that represents your professional career by mentioning your aspirations, skills, and achievements. It is a paraphrase of your knowledge and talents. It is most commonly use to secure new employment. Henceforth, it is important to make it to the best of your abilities.

Resume writing is an art in itself. One needs to put their best foot forward and create their best impression. It is a depiction of you and you want to present the best of yourself. There are some guidelines to be followed while making a resume. They help in improvising it and give clarity to the points.

With guidelines being followed, people make some very common mistakes while writing their resume. In this article, some of those mistakes have been pointed out with the methods to fix them. Remember, these mistakes may screw up your chances of landing that dream job of yours. Pay attention while writing your resume.

1. Avoid typos and Grammatical Errors

Typos and grammatical errors are the most common and undervalued mistakes done in resume making. These errors can ruin the prospects of any candidate and turn out to be a major turn off for the Interviewer. These mistakes are so easy to occur with anyone yet it is mostly overlooked.

The resume needs to be grammatically perfect. Typos and grammatical errors show that the candidate is not serious about the job or he/she cannot even present him/her. This shows the employer that the candidate lacks the attention to detail.

FIX: Going through the resume many times overlooks the mistakes through your eyes. Hence, it is better to ask someone else to go through the resume for you. Or, try reading your resume from bottom to top. This will give you the glimpse of incorrect spellings and grammatical errors.

2. One resume for all or mass mailing

Sending one resume for all the jobs portals or employers may lead to getting you a low grade. One needs to define their resume according to the job requirement. Mass mailing your resume without changing it accordingly will make the employer think that you haven’t done your homework properly and don’t know what you are getting yourself into. They wouldn’t want to waste their time on someone who doesn’t know what they have applied for.

FIX: Read the job description carefully and prepare your resume accordingly. Make your resume according to the job requirements. For example, if you have a technical background and you are applying for a management job, change your resume and highlight your managerial skills rather technical.

3. Keywords

90% of the resumes goes through the web portal to the employer and then are filtered according to the keyword filters added by the employer. If you can’t get filtered by these keywords, you are dead fish in the water. Hence, it is important to add these keywords to your resume. You may add them in your career objective section or job description, but it is relevant to come into that sorted list of resumes that the employer reads. Getting filtered down to that list increases the ratio of your hiring.

FIX: Search for the keywords on job portals like Naukri, Monster, CareerBuilder, etc. according to your profile and add them to your resume. Look for the most searched keywords, understand them and look for their place in your industry before adding them. Do not overload your resume with the keywords!

4. Objective

Never write cliché objectives like, “Seeking a challenging position that offers professional growth.” There is everyone and there is you. Stand out. Write about yourself, what you want to do with your career, your skills in the most basic form and what do you want to do in their company. Use this section to position yourself to the requirements of the position you are applying for. This is your own comprehension and is the most meticulous one.

FIX: Don’t copy your objective from anywhere; write what best suits in the most summarized form.

5. Too Long or too short

You don’t need to mention each and everything in your resume. Make it short, simple and pertinent. Don’t elaborate it if not required. If you have 30 years of working experience than it makes senses to have a resume of 3 to 4 pages, if not than stick to the maximum of 2-page resume.

You don’t need to cram all the details of your life into your resume and ramble on and on about it. Add what is important and avoid other details. Writing everything will hide the important points. You do not want to bore your employer with your resume. No one wants to read everything. They only want to see what they are looking for. Leave some blank spaces in between but don’t extend it.

Conversely, don’t shorten your resume too much. Write what is necessary. Don’t cut the meat out in order to use few pages.

FIX: Be eloquent with your resume. Write what the employer is searching for and to the precise points. Don’t elaborate anything. For example, if you are an engineer by graduation and is applying to a food and beverage company, you don’t need to mention your technical skills into it.

Don’t overload your resume; keep it simple, focused and precise.

6. Be yourself

Always remember that the resume is a portrayal of you. Be careful with it. Portray your best self in the most lucrative way possible. Don’t write what is already written about you in various other places. Re-frame your thinking and write it as an instruction manual to your skills, assets, and professional life.

FIX: Make sure that when you proofread your resume, you are satisfied with it.

7. Use Bullets

It is important to keep your resume as readable as possible. Don’t make it a professional chapter with lots paragraphs in it. Instead, use bullets to increase its clarity and readability. Make sure you are consistent in using it.

Some candidates use bullets in every section without making a point. They just add everything on bullets. Avoid this and keep your resume consistent and tidy with the required bullets.

FIX: Use bullets intelligibly. Don’t overdo it; don’t underdo it either. Don’t use a different kind of bullets either. Keep it consistent and tidy.

8. Being Vague

Don’t put anything and everything on your resume. As pointed about, keep your resume short, clear and simple. But also, put on some quantitative tasks on it. Candidates usually write about their former position and accomplishments. The employer has no interests in this. They want to know what you did at that certain position, what your tasks were and how well you did them. Make your resume duty driven rather accomplishments driven.

For example:

1. Worked as an HR Manager.
2. Searched, recruit, hire, onboard the candidates for in-house openings.

FIX: Be specific with your tasks and mention your accomplishments in details. Employers want to know what all you know and in how much detail. Mention them rather elaborate your earnings.

9. Resume Format

This is one of the major mistakes done by us while sending the resume. Have you noticed that when you send your resume from one system to another the formatting is not the same? The alignments are skewed with the bullets going haywire all over the document. Imagine looking at someone’s resume for the first time with this formatting. This is what your employer would feel if you don’t take necessary precautions for this.

FIX: Always test your resume by sending it to another system before forwarding it to your employer or uploading it. Avoid use word files, instead use PDF wherever you can. Make an electronic copy of your resume and keep it on your Google drive.

Notes:

• Avoid using action verbs. For example, ‘responsible for’ should be written as ‘called, took requirements and forwarded to the team’.
• Don’t make your resume too busy. Avoid using different, font, wall to wall alignments and definer bullets. Instead keep it simple.
• Always proofread your resume before forwarding it to your employer.
• Check your contact information twice. What would a good resume be of use if you employer can’t contact you?
• Never list References directly on the resume. It is not mandatory to give references. Either avoid giving it or use another page.

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