Resume Mistakes

“Voted best pubic service manager two years in a row.”

You may be thinking, “Duh, I know how to create a resume and I know how to spell-check,” but we spoke to Human Resources managers and—apparently some of us don’t. One in four Human Resources managers receive more than 50 resumes for each open position and more than one in ten receive over 100, according to a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com.* So how do you bypass getting trashed along with the rest of that giant stack? Here are the most common resume mistakes they see…that you need to avoid.

Resume Mistake #1 - Annoying typos.
“Reason for leaving last position: maturity leave.”

63% of HR managers report that spelling errors are the most annoying mistakes that they see on resumes, according to the CareerBuilder.com survey. Here’s the thing: Your word processor’s spell-check feature doesn’t know the difference between they’re and their or, god forbid, public and pubic. “Read and reread your final resume. Have people who know you well also read it and get their opinion,” advises professional resume writer Kay LaRocca, of resumewriters.com.

Resume Mistake #2 - Cookie-cutter resumes.
“Objective: An account executive position in an architectural design firm.”

When an HR manager is weeding through a thick stack of wannabe employees’ resumes, you’ve got to stand out. (And no, hot pink paper is not the appropriate way to do this.) “I’ve seen people e-mail one pre-prepared resume, copying twenty different companies in the same e-mail,” says Stephen Keyzers, Vice-President of Employer Relations at HR Alternatives. “Mail one resume at a time, tailored to the specific company.” How do you do this? Put your objective at the top of your resume and be specific about the position you’re applying for. Compliment the company; prove that you’ve read their mission statement and that you fit into it.