7 Most Detrimental Resume Mistakes
The Managing Director of KAS Placement, Alison Ringo, and her recruitment team look over a minimum of 200 different resumes per day — which is more than many publicly traded companies.
However, unlike most of these firms, we have compiled a list of the 10 most detrimental resume mistakes that job seekers make when both applying to recruiters and directly to the hiring company.
Though some of these mistakes may appear quite sophomoric, about 20% of all resumes submitted into our staffing agency possess one of the 10 discussed resume flaws. While nobody can change the past, be sure that you have the following taken care of moving forward and it should ensure a brighter future.
1. Copying and Pasting Job Descriptions – Many resume writers get attached to a single phrase or very similar variation of a phrase and decide to spread it through the entire document, thus making the resume at first appear more robust and well-thought out.
However, this carries the opposite effect and what appears comprehensive to the resume writer, seems lazy and thoughtless of the count of the resume reader. Any HR manager who is interviewing for an important position is going to immediately look for these shortcuts because. They’re a tell-tale sign of potential employee cutting corners in the future.
Remedy – Alter your wording using more adjectives, varied job descriptions, and if need be, keep your resume shorter. Redundancy prevents dozens of who apply into our recruiting firm from getting to our clients daily.
2. Overly Vague – When writing a resume, brainstorm all the important questions that a hiring manager may have about your position using a “Who What When Where Why” model.
If you don’t feel that you are an exact fit for a position, don’t dumb down your resume using phrases such as “managed others” instead of the more accurate “lead team of 4 sales representatives (2 inside) covering the Southeast region,” simply because the job description calls for experience managing a team of at least 5.
Being vague does not get you into an interview; it prevents you from getting there in the first place.
Remedy – If you don’t have all the qualifications for a job and want to avoid an awkward interview, be upfront about the mismatches on your resume compared to that of the hiring company’s job description. Briefly describe how you can fill these gaps better than those who may be halfway there.