Some time ago I started wandering what the most frequent resume mistakes are. I decided to ask my friend Jana Rookard, who has been an HR manager for ten years and now works at Assignment Jedii – assignment help service. She said that she has looked through more than 10 000 resumes in her career. Some of them are good, some are mediocre and some are just terrible. The interesting thing is, she says, that during 10 years of her career people continue make the same mistakes. The worst of it is when good candidates make such mistakes. But it is difficult to compromise here and most often candidates with even the smallest mistakes get rejected. Here are the most common ones.

Mistakes

Researches show that 58% of resumes in US contain spelling and grammar mistakes. It is more than a half!

How do you fix it? After you carefully read your resume, read it again, but from the bottom to the top. Thus, you can focus on each line of the text separately.

Length

There is an unofficial rule: one page for every 10 years of experience. Can’t you put all of your achievements in one page? Well, I have bad news for you; nobody reads 3-4 pages’ essays. Clear and short resume shows your ability to organize your thoughts in a laconic manner and give only the valuable information. Think about it: the purpose of your resume is an invitation to a job interview. That’s all. It is just a tool to get a chance to tell more about yourself. Thus, once you get to an interview, you can tell about all of your highlights, but keep a resume short.  

Formatting

Unless you are looking for a designer or an artist job, make your resume plain and readable. The font has to be at least 10. The paper has to be white and the text black. Show it to somebody before sending and ask them if it is easy to read.   

Disclosure of confidential information

About 5 – 10% of resumes contain confidential information of the hints on it. No employer wants such information to be disclosed, so you probably won’t be hired. You need to find boundaries between disclosing secret information and show you to advantage. Here is a small test: imagine that your resume gets to the front page of a popular newspaper and your previous boss can read it. If you don’t want that to happen, change some of your words.

Lies

Lying causes nothing but troubles:

1. You can easily be disclosed. The Internet, your acquaintances or former employer can say that you did not graduate with honors and that you were a small manager and not an executive.  
2. It will haunt you. Imagine that this lie will be revealed in 15 years when you will be a candidate for a big promotion.  Родители вас такому не учили.

These 5 mistakes are the most frequent in resumes. HR managers seek for the best candidates and if you make any of those mistakes, you probably won’t get the job. But there is a bright side! As these mistakes are made by the majority of people, you can stand up only by not making them.