Common mistakes to avoid when writing your resume

You already know that your resume is a single document in your career life that you don’t want to play with, let alone making mistakes, thats why you will need to check and crosscheck your resume intermittently, especially when you are applying for a new job.

In this post we will reveal some common resume mistakes  to avoid in your resume, how to spot it and the few simple remedy you can apply to correct them.

YOU WILL LEARN THE FOLLOWING:

How can mistakes on my resume affect my career?

What are some examples of common resume mistakes?

How do I avoid common resume mistakes?

No matter where you’re applying for jobs, the people doing the hiring are likely reading many, many resumes.

This means that even if your resume is packed with impressive skills and experience, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd. And having mistakes on your resume will make you stand out for the wrong reason especially in 2022.

Beyond typos, there are plenty of other mistakes people commonly make on their resumes, such as making them too long.

A 3 or 4 or 10 page resume simply won’t get read closely. A crisp, focused resume, on the other hand, demonstrates an ability to summarize, prioritize, and convey the most important information about you.

As you write and revise your resume, pay attention to length. 1 page is ideal, but if you need to go longer, a good rule of thumb is 1 page of resume for every 10 years of work experience.

Note:
The sole purpose of a resume is to get you an interview. That’s it. It’s not to convince a hiring manager to say “yes” to you or to tell them your life story.

So save that stuff for your interview, and use your resume as the tool that gets you in the room.

When it comes to formatting, unless you’re applying for a design or art job, your focus should be on making your resume clean and legible.

Use at least 10-point font, with at least half-inch margins. Print it with black ink on white paper, using consistent spacing between lines, consistent alignment for columns, and your name and contact information on every page.

Since formatting can get garbled when moving across platforms, try to look at your resume in both Google Docs and Word, then attach it to an email and open it as a preview. Better yet, save it as a PDF.

Some candidates find ways to honor the letter of their confidentiality agreements but not the spirit, saying something like “worked on project for major software company based in [location that makes the company obvious].” This is a mistake.

Speaking of things to not put on your resume, lying on your resume is never, ever, ever, worth it. Everyone, up to and including CEOs, gets fired for this.

People lie about their degrees, their GPAs, and where they went to school. They exaggerate how long they were at companies, how big their teams were, and how impressive their sales results were, to name just a few.

There are 3 big problems with lying. First, the person reading your resume can easily see you’ve lied, either through a simple reference check, Internet search, or discussion with people who worked at your previous employers.

Second, lies follow you forever. So even if a small fib gets you hired today, you could be exposed as a fraud in 15 years, which isn’t great.

Finally, your resume is a prospective employer’s first impression of you, and a lie is a pretty bad first impression. Lying to an employer at the beginning of your relationship will show them that you aren’t trustworthy.

Final words

Now that you know some of the most common mistakes people make on their resumes, identify these mistakes on your current resume and make steps to correct them before applying for that next job.

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