5 strategic mistakes in a resume of jobseekers

Despite the great number of posts on resume mistakes, useful tips and even trainings on resume writing, people who look for a job continue “to reinvent the wheel”. Because of the incorrectly written resume the process of the work search passes more slowly and less successfully. Our executive resume writers have gathered for you 5 strategic mistakes that most jobseekers make. This post about mistakes in a resume will not only help you to avoid them, but also will give advice how to correct the errors if you have already made them.

1. Illiteracy

Most employers claim that an illiterate resume is 100% irritating. Misprints also belong here. of Employer can understand why the specialists, who do not know well how to use computer, for example, security guards, drivers or general workers, make errors in their texts. But for the office workers such errors are inacceptable. Mistakes in a resume show that the specialist is not only illiterate, but also careless and disorderly. An employer hardly wants to trust to such a person his clients, correspondence with the partners and so on.

That is why our main advice is before resume sending always check it for mistakes. Fortunately, on the Internet there are many vocabularies and programs that check the spelling. Or, for example, if the spelling of a word causes difficulty, or you are not sure whether there should be coma or not, just paraphrase the text. Write the same using words and phrases, spelling of which you are sure about.

2. Artsy design

Sometimes jobseekers turn their resume from the means of employment into the means of self-expression. It can be expressed in a flatulent photo, diversity of fonts and colours, which a jobseeker uses formatting the resume. Some time ago graphical resume was popular, but it did not last for a long time.

HR managers strongly advise not to create such a resume. The main reason is that all the services that offer visual CV do not take into account the desires of recruiters. Very often among all those graphs, drawings, and schemes it is very hard for HRs to find and distinguish the most important elements in the professional experience of a jobseeker, and it often happens that the most essential facts such services “send” down, and as a result such a resume is difficult to read.

Today because of the crisis the number of resume is constantly increasing. So if a recruiter has to “break his eyes” to overcome all the “decorations” to get to the resume essence, you can hardly expect positive reaction to it.

Visual resume is suitable for creative professions only. In case of other professions – the more recruiter understands in your resume, the better for you. So if you want to write resume that perfectly suits your profession, you can use our professional resume service. Our specialists will write the most suitable for you resume.

3. Unsystematic presentation

There are several generally accepted resume structures, which allow a jobseeker to structure information about himself, and allow a recruiter to find quickly necessary data about a jobseeker. That is why 5-7-paged resume, in which a worker tries to write absolutely everything (the whole work experience, full list of all passed courses, even those that have no direct relation to the profession, the list of desirable positions), does not help you, but causes only harm.

Clear structure of a resume, concise text, the necessary points and important facts about your activity only, business style photo – these are the parameters that make your resume successful. A recruiter should find easily the answers to his questions in your resume, and not feel as if he is Sherlock Holmes.

To make your resume easy to read we suggest you one of the variants of its optimal structure: full name, contacts, desired position and salary level, work experience, education, additional education, skills / hobbies (but only those ones that may help you to do your work), recommendations. Perfect resume size is 1,5-2 pages.

At the same time if there is nothing to write in any of these points, do not write anything. Do not make anything up and do not try to write more than it should be. For example, if you lack work experience, you should not write three lines of the text in 14 size font for two pages.

The most important quality of the candidates according to most HR experts is adequacy. Adequacy check begins with the resume. Keep it in mind.

4. Absence of achievements

Opening a resume, an HR manager wants to figure out if a jobseeker has successful professional work experience, and what he can give to the company. So if in the block “Work experience” he sees only the list of duties that a candidate implemented, he will hardly understand something about the candidate. Unfortunately, most jobseekers describe their work experience writing the duties and responsibilities only.

It would be perfect if you write the list of your achievements for each workplace in measurable index, i.e. in numbers, dates and facts. For example, if you were PR manager, write how much more often mass media began to mention the company, how much events you held for the press and so on.

5. Deception

Despite all the achievements, many employees continue to lie in their resume. For example, they write false age, work experience, education and so on. However, it does not matter how much you want to get a job, never lie in your resume, at the interview, and in general avoid deception.

Do you know what will happen if you tell a lie? First of all, your lie will be discovered anyway sooner or later. Maybe it will not happen at one, but at the interview an experience recruiter in any case will learn the truth. Second of all, if they figure out that you are lying, a recruiter will add you to so-called “black list”. And thirdly, always remember that an HR, as well as any other specialist, can also change job at any moment, additionally recruiters often exchange their bases of the candidates with each other, it means that information about you as a liar and deceiver will go beyond the company. So it is hardly worth to risk.