Our series on the World’s Best Resume discusses how to build a CV that will make employers swoon. But what are the mistakes that will tank your chances of landing that dream job? Read on.
1. Typos. A resume is a thing of precision. In an arena as competitive as the job market, every letter counts and one out-of-place comma could spell rejection. For this reason, the commonest error on resumes is also the one most likely to get them tossed in the garbage. If anything on your resume is misspelled or badly-punctuated, you can kiss your chances goodbye. That goes double for mistakes in your name or contact information—if they can’t get in touch with you, how could they possibly hire you?
2. Incorrect information. If anything on your resume or CV is categorically false, your resume is very likely to end up in the “No” pile. Make sure you don’t refer to any nonprofits as corporations or start your cover letter with “Dear Mr. Smith” when the recruiter is actually Ms. Smith.
3. Irrelevant information. You always want your CV to be short, sweet and simple, a testament to your skills and ability to display them. Keep all the information as efficiently-packed as possible, from top to bottom.
4. Falsified achievements. Fudging dates of employment or adding fake awards might seem like an easy way to get a leg up on the competition. But intentionally falsifying your accomplishments is an easy way to get not only rejected, but blacklisted from other companies as well. In our information-rich world, it’s incredibly easy to look up a company and drop them a line to see whether you really did get Employee of the Month for twenty-seven months running.
5. Bad phrasing. Silly as it may seem, the way you phrase your abilities and achievements is vital to your chances of getting picked for an interview. Most companies nowadays use online databases to collect, sort and manage applications. Then, when it comes time to look through the pile, whoever’s in charge of new hires will search the database for the best resumes, likely using key words and phrases that apply to the job at hand. If you’re applying for a data analysis position and you write that you’re skilled in “data organization and research,” you won’t even pop up when they do the search! This ties in with mistake #3: it’s up to you to make sure all of your abilities are cited as accurately as possible.
The moral of all this? Be very, very careful. Read over your resume with these five errors in mind, and correct anything you see that’s wrong or out of place. Then go back to the beginning and read it over again. Print it out and read it out loud. Email it to a friend and have them look at it—sometimes even glaring errors can slip past you. Once you’ve run it through the editing machine a few times, it should sparkle like a polished gem. Give it one more look-over, and then head to the job boards to begin the search!