Resume Mistakes can cost you a job

Bad Grades, lack of experience, poor interviewing skills?? Those reasons are definitely important. However according many hiring managers we have talked to Mistakes in the Resume is the single most important reason for rejecting job seekers.

What does a mistake on your resume tell about you?

Getting the right job is one of the most important activities for most of us. If you can not write a one page document that is going to determine your success or failure, then how can a prospective employer trust you with handling his valued customers, millions of dollars or some sensitive legal work?

Funny thing is this is the easiest problem to solve

I can understand if someone is struggling because of bad academic record, lack of experience or poor interviewing skills. Those issues can not be overcome or take time to overcome. However if you are struggling because of resume mistakes then you have no excuse.

Find out if you are committing any stupid resume mistakes

The problem with solving resume mistakes is that most people do not know that they have a problem. Take 15 minutes time right now to find out if your resume has any problem that may be causing rejection.

Most common Resume Mistakes: Are you committing any of them?

1. A resume that won't open: So you are a tech savvy guy who has the latest version of Microsoft word and you have used a really cool feature. The employer is going to be too happy with you. Too Bad. Most probably the HR person has word 95 and hence will not be able to open your resume. Looser you say. I know but guess what, that looser is going to decide whether to call you for the interview or not. Use the most standard features of word. Also do not use any fancy fonts as not all fonts are available on every machine.

2. A resume with virus: That is another problem with word files. They are highly prone to viruses. If your resume has been a victim of one of those viruses then there is a good chance that it never reaches the HR. The filtering software simply deletes your email.

3. Because of these inherent problems with Microsoft word, I always encourage people to send a pdf version of the resume.

4. Wrong contact information: It is the most innocent of errors with the most dangerous result. An extra 'a', a hyphen instead of underscore or the last letter being omitted and you shall never get to see any of those call letters from the HR. The best way to ensure your contact information is correct is to copy-paste the email id given on your resume and then send an email to it.

5. Unprofessional email id: partygurl69 or rocking-dude may be great ids for your facebook profile. But using them on your resume or sending the resume from that email id is the best way to ensure that the HR person will never call you for an interview. Get a little boring and create an email id that reads firstname.lastname@gmail.com

6. Typo errors: I know you have already run spell check on your resume. But even Mr Gates can have some errors. Want some proof? Put the following 2 lines in a word document and run spell check.

a. OBJECTIVE: To work in the filed that will allow me to put my engineering skills to the best use

b. SKILLS: Meet and greet clients. Take massages

What did spell check say? No errors, right? Now look at the sentences correctly. Do you see the blunders? filed for field and massages for messages.

How to ensure that your resume does not contain any such error? Here are some tips to remove typo mistakes from your resume

o Read slowly through your resume.

o Proofread your resume more than once.

o Ask a friend or family member to proofread for you

7. Difficult to read and understand: The HR manager needs to go through 100 of resumes after your resume. On an average HR managers use less than 30 seconds before rejecting a resume. If they can not read your resume in 30 seconds, they will rather not read it at all. Somethings that make a resume too difficult to read

a. Too small fonts- Always use a readable font size even if that means your resume runs into 2 pages

b. Long paragraph style writing - No point in your resume should be more than 1 line long or maximum 2 lines. Break them down into bullet points. Bold the important points. Not the entire sentence but only the point like "my programme won the 3^rd prize in the annual programming contest at MIT.

c. Too much information: No one has time to read a 5 page resume. Restrict your resume to 1 or 2 pages. If it has to be longer than that then keep the lesser important stuff towards the end

8. You created the resume from a Sample Resume and forgot to change fathers' name and your home address is some place in Canada. There is nothing wrong in using sample resumes. Actually sample resumes are a great way to avoid many of the above errors. However make sure that you change all the information in it. The best way to ensure this is to make the color of entire text red and write the new info in black. That ways all that you need to ensure is that there are no red spots on the resume.

9. Your resume has no connect to the job requirement: This is a problem specific to freshers resumes and resumes of interns and happens because they are using the same resume for completely different jobs. A programming company is very much interested in all the cool programming contest you won but do you need to say all that to a marketing company? Think about it.

10. A not so sober social profile: Yes employers do visit the social profile to know more about you. They are very likely to visit your facebook/myspace/orkut profile. Do you still want that drunk picture on your profile or that testimonial proclaiming that you are the laziest person on the campus?