20 mistakes in resume writing, which our service helps to avoid

Good specialists, professionals in their field will be always demanded in any country in any economic situation development. The question is how an employer can learn about employees in the job market. How to present your own achievements, experience and knowledge in a favorable light? How to sell your time as much expensive as possible? How not to make mistakes in resume writing? How to make an employer read your resume and invite you for an interview? Answers to all these questions and help with resume writing you can get on our website resume-service.org. So if you face some problems and if there is only one thought in your head “I need help writing my resume”, our service is the best option for you. Our highly skilled team will help you to write professional competent resume.

Common resume writing mistakes

Resume is a kind of detailed business card of an employee, where in a brief form without lyrical introductions all your working places, occupied positions, achievements and skills are listed. To attract attention of an HR manager who chooses a specialist for a vacant position in a company you need to try to avoid the most dangerous traps and not to make common mistakes.

1. Grammatical and stylistic mistakes, misprints and unstructured text. Resume that contains all these mistakes will likely get into rubbish bin. No one recruiter who has self-respect will read a text with mistakes. An illiterate employee is not interesting for a company.

2. Unformatted text. It is hard to read a resume, in which there are no paragraphs, accentuations and specifications. HR managers, as a rule, do no read the whole text, they can professionally read “diagonally”, finding in a resume the most important for them phrases. Those resume, in which an employee claims that he is confident computer user, looks very ridiculous.

It is recommended to highlight clearly the titles and subtitles, it is forbidden to use different fonts, many-coloured markers to emphasize something and other kinds of decoration. It is allowed to use no more than two different fonts in a document, bold and underline allowed in titles. Resume is an official document, and not a love letter to employer.

3. Template resume that look just like hundred others. Resume-clones also will not be read in serious companies, motivating this with the fact that a person without creative thinking is not able to follow correctly the course of a developing company. However, for technical staff these requirements are rarely used.

It is better to avoid standard enumeration of skills and qualities: communicative, stress-resistant, positive, active, read with a dictionary, etc. Do not use typical phrases, such as I participated, worked, helped, taught and so on. Such words and phrases are boring and formal, they do not show the jobseeker’s uniqueness at all.

Specific phrases sound much better: “I trained three subordinates art sales in two weeks” or “I expanded the customer base by 30%, and in such a way increased the profits of the company by 90% in six months”. The most important thing is to avoid exaggerations.

4. Not exact dates of the start and end of work. Such an inexactness of chronological dates describes you as a person non-organized, deceitful, motiveless, with a bad memory. If you do not remember the dates writing resume, just look at your employment history. What can be easier?

5. Not designated purpose. What is the purpose of resume writing? To get a good position? Which one? The structure of a resume and its content depends greatly on the answers to these questions. A jobseeker can be interested in occupying different positions, so resume for each new job should be unique, written considering the vacancy requirements.

6. Writing the whole list of working biography in resume. If work experience is more than 10 years, it is not recommended to write in detail all the facts of your career development. It is enough to mention the dates of beginning and end of work at previous working places during the last 3-5 years, but not more than 10 years.

7. Resume in PDF or applications format. Such types of resume almost no one recruitment agency takes into consideration, if this format was not discussed previously. Structured text in Word processor is an optimal option for selling resume writing.

8. Excess information. Resume, in which an employee in detail and artistically describes his personal life, hobbies, achievements, family status, interests, car owning, habits and so on, usually provokes laugh on the professional sites of recruiters. Not to be laughed at, it would be better to delete the excess inappropriate information from your resume. Also you should not write the date of resume writing, it is another kind of excess information.

9. Lies in the facts. The security service of the employer’ company can easily check any information about biography and work experience of a jobseeker. Even if you manage to deceive a recruiter in your resume by claiming that you have nonexistent achievements or trying to hide undesirable facts from your biography, eventually all the secrets will be revealed.

The distortion of information in the dates of birth, increasing or decreasing the terms of the work on the former positions, incorrectly written name and last name, family status, false information about possession of skills required to the chosen position increase the possibility that resume will not be read at all.

Experienced recruiters pay special attention to the reasons for dismissal from previous jobs. It is better to write the truth. Each fact of working biography is easy to check.

10. Inappropriate photos presentation. Photos in a swimming suit, on the beach, in home surrounding are inappropriate in an official document, and resume is a kind of official documents. If you decided to add a photo, it should photo placed in the beginning of your resume, where you are dressed in business suit (maybe sitting at the table). Also pay attention to the size and weight of a photo. There is nothing worse than resume that downloads for a very long time.

11. Blank resume of those who have no work experience. Eve if a person has never worked, still he has certain achievements: a student participated in social life of university, a housewife trained some skills required for a certain vacancy. All this should be mentioned in resume in an official form.

12. Use of highly specialized words and phrases. Some jobseekers trying to make an impression use in their resume foreign words, slang and technical terms, which are usually used in the narrow circles of experts. It is better to abandon such practices and use simple understandable language.

13. Claims to higher-level positions. If an employee has never occupied management position, and tries to apply for the post of manager or head of the department, such profiles cause confusion and recruiters’ negative.

14. Tactless requests. Resume that contains requests, high expectations and unrealistic salaries, special benefits and privileges is considered tactless. It is rude to set strict requests without having proved your competence and professionalism.

15. Missed chances. In the end of any resume it would be nice to write few words about yourself, briefly about your hobbies, healthy style of life, ability to work in a team, and do not forget to prove everything with concrete facts. Such additions influence positively resume consideration.

16. Incorrect title of the document. Do not write word “resume” in the document title. The title should begin with the name and last name of a jobseeker. After it photo, date of birth, address, family status, presence or absence of children, information about education and previous working place follow.

17. Many applications to resume. Recruiters do not like weighty applications in the form of covering letters or recommendations, photos and ready projects (unless company requires all of that).

18. Presentation of resume copies in person. When an employee at the personal meeting gives HR manager a resume copy printed on an inkjet printer, it creates negative general impression of the meeting.

19. Long resume. Your resume should be characterized by clarity, concreteness, brevity and honesty, and it should not exceed two pages.

20. Resume sending by e-mail to all in a row. Before sending resume, it is necessary to read attentively the employment conditions and requirements of the proposed position. Before writing and sending resume to an employer, you should ask yourself, what job you want to find and why you need this very work in this company.

For a jobseeker to remember

Your resume will be read by someone, who has never seen you. That is why you need to work on your resume creatively trying to show all your potential, experience and skills. It is also recommended to avoid frequent repetition of the pronoun “I”.

For this purpose:

• write resume and give it your friends, colleagues and close ones to read;
• listen to their comments and remarks and ask them to answer the question “how well resume reveals your strong sides and professional skills”;
• take into consideration all the remarks, make necessary changes and correct the mistakes;
• resume should be dynamic, you should constantly develop it, make changes, additions, re-write the text;
• the core of your resume should be an answer to the employer’s question: “Why should I hire you for the position?”;
• do not send one and the same resume to one and the same employer, this is a road to nowhere. If a recruiter did not answer your letter, there is no need to constantly remind and demand the answer;
• competent and detailed covering letter may help greatly your resume.

The main rule of resume writing is that this document should be written in such a way that it will be pleasant to read it and you will be invited for an interview. Your main goal is to achieve personal meeting with an employer. However, remember that an invitation for an interview does not guarantee getting of the desired work.