Six Tips To Help You Fix Resume Mistakes Employers Dislike (Research)

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Unsure of why you are not getting many interview calls after applying for a job opening? Your resume might be the culprit!

It turns out, employers are likely to reject job applications if they have resume mistakes, according to a recent survey by OfficeNeedle.

To avoid having your resume turned down and stay positive during your job search, make sure to go through your resume and fix the following mistakes:

1. DON’T SEND THE SAME RESUME FOR EVERY JOB

Sending out the same resume over and over again won’t do you any good. As a matter of fact, almost one in two employers who took the survey (forty-seven percent of them) stated they reject candidates who send in resumes not related to the job position in any way.  

Your job application needs to include contact information, experience and education sections, and, finally, a skills section. When applying for a certain job, you need to show how your experience, education, and skills correspond with the job description in the advert.

By relating your experiences and knowledge to the job position you are applying for, you will show your potential boss how they could benefit from having you as a part of their team. List your achievements to show what you accomplished at your previous job positions. This is crucial as over forty percent of two thousand eight hundred employers who took the poll reject candidates who fail to show their impacts and accomplishments.

In your experience and education sections, make sure to put your latest information at the top as around six in 10 employers might reject you otherwise. In the education section, you do not have to include your GPA (according to over ninety percent of asked employers). However, every time you apply for a different job position, you should tailor your resume so that it relates to it. Using figures and quantified achievements that relate to the job could help you a lot here.

2. DON’T MAKE IT LONG

Job seekers oftentimes think it is appropriate to make their resume long to show what they know and which skills they have. However, this is a wrong approach. The majority of surveyed employers, i.e. over fifty percent of them, stated they are likely to reject an application that is longer than two pages.

This is not surprising, as half of these employers review resumes in just one to five minutes and they don’t have a lot of time on their hands to read through everything you put on your resume.

That is why job seekers who have under 10 years of experience should stick to keeping their resume around a page long, while the more experienced individuals should make it no longer than two pages.

3. DON’T SEND A GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT APPLICATION

Three-quarters of polled employers (yes, seventy-five percent of them) revealed they would reject a resume if it includes spelling errors and bad grammar. It is not surprising, as most job openings these days imply having strong communication skills, including writing skills.

Before you submit your resume, proofread it so that there are no typos in it. Some commonly misspelled words include “acheive” instead of “achieve”, “aquire” instead of “acquire”, and so on.

When it comes to grammar, stick to using the past simple tense when talking about events that happened in the past. Furthermore, you should not use pronouns in the document, but instead write bite-sized information on what you did (avoid using “me” “I”, and so on).

Having your application submitted free of any grammar and spelling mistakes will show that you absolutely made sure to carefully read every word and sentence. On the other hand, when employers spot these mistakes, they will think you did not devote enough time to it and you do not care about the outcome of your application.

4. DO NOT WRITE A CLICHÉ DESCRIPTION OF YOURSELF

If your resume is filled with clichés, such as “hard worker”, “go-getter”, “thinking outside of the box”, the survey revealed that around sixty percent of employers admitted they might turn you down.

It is a good idea to show you are a hard worker by writing down how you managed your time at previous job positions, what you did, and more. This will give a lot more value to the employer so they can see how you can contribute to their business if they hire you.

Along with those meaningless descriptive words, you should also avoid stuffing your resume pages to the point there is no white space on them. Your application needs to be easy to read. To make it readable, use one font (preferably without tacky serif detail that makes it hard to read). In fact, using more than one font is a mistake that could result in the rejection of the candidate according to just under fifty percent of surveyed employers.

5. PROVIDE YOUR PHONE NUMBER AND EMAIL ADDRESS

Imagine you send in the perfect application and the hiring manager is really excited to contact you, but then you never answer their calls. So many job seekers forget to check if their phone number is updated so they can never be reached.

Over ninety percent of the survey participants want your phone number in the contact section of the resume. Make sure it is your latest phone number so you can be invited for a job interview easily.

If you are debating whether to include your social media handles, only fourteen percent of employers said they want you to include it. If it is solely used for private purposes, there is no reason to include it.

Another thing to focus on is not adding an inappropriate email address to the contact section. Around one-fifth of polled employers say they reject resumes where applicants have inappropriate email addresses such as “nuttygirl_xD@yahoo.com.

6. DON’T EXPLAIN WHY YOU LEFT A JOB

Job seekers sometimes have short-span job experiences on their resumes and they like to justify that. However, only twenty-five percent of employers who took the survey said they wanted job seekers to include reasons for early termination of a job.

On the other hand, it would be a good practice to include this reason in your cover letter, so that you don’t waste precious space on it in a resume. Moreover, hiring managers might bring it up in your job interview so you will get your chance to justify yourself then.

Your Next Step After you are finished with updating your contact, experience, education, and skills section, you can even add some extra interesting information about yourself. You can mention your hobbies, the languages you speak, and more. Once you have all the information, make the design of the page easy-flowing, and you are good to go! However, make sure you have read the job description carefully, as many companies also want a cover letter along with your resume.

Common Resume CV Mistakes Infographic

2 thoughts on “Six Tips To Help You Fix Resume Mistakes Employers Dislike (Research)”

  1. Thanks for sharing this useful post. These resume-writing tips will help to avoid the rejection and can help in getting many interview calls.

  2. Useful post, It’s best to learn from other’s mistakes than to feel the urge to commit one by oneself & then think of learning. I think we’ve all made some of these mistakes to some degree or another. I’m glad you’ve pointed out these mistakes here.

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