Spelling and grammatical errors
Not all of us are great spellers or wonderful writers. That’s not a big deal. You have to find a friend who’s really good at English and make sure your resume is error-free.
ALL CAPITAL LETTERS THROUGHOUT YOUR RESUME
No connection to the job
Your cover letter will show the clear connection between your background and the specific opportunity you’re pursuing, but your CV or resume must do that, too. You can’t send a resume that screams “Project Manager” in response to a job posting for an HR Generalist without customizing your resume to show the clear intersection points between the two jobs.
I got a resume for an Executive Administrator position we were filling for a client. The cover letter was tremendous. The candidate was a guy. I flipped over to his resume. It was 100% audio-visual, corporate event management experience. That’s great experience and could translate well to some Executive Administrator jobs, but the poor guy hadn’t spent one brain cell making that connection clear either in his cover letter or his resume, so he got a No Thanks letter.
Name, Rank and Serial Number
The first thing any resume reviewer is going to ask is “Did this person put time into his or her resume?” In many cases the answer is sadly “Nope.” We want to know where you’ve been and what you accomplished at each place. A resume is not a job application. When a resume lists your job title and dates of employment and maybe two more words, like this: “Managed Accounts” we assume you had no more insight into your contribution than that placeholder. That’s a fail.
Full Metal Zombiespeak
If you, having already performed your job and thus understanding more about it than almost anyone, describe your job using language lifted straight out of the company’s pay-grade manual, that’s not good. We want to see a human being coming through the page. Only human beings get hired.
Impossible Chronology
Check your resume with an eye for the story conveyed in it. Look at the dates you’ve supplied for each job and educational program. If you held a couple of different jobs at the same time or freelanced while you worked, that’s great — but spell it out.
Not all of us are great spellers or wonderful writers. That’s not a big deal. You have to find a friend who’s really good at English and make sure your resume is error-free.
ALL CAPITAL LETTERS THROUGHOUT YOUR RESUME
No connection to the job
Your cover letter will show the clear connection between your background and the specific opportunity you’re pursuing, but your CV or resume must do that, too. You can’t send a resume that screams “Project Manager” in response to a job posting for an HR Generalist without customizing your resume to show the clear intersection points between the two jobs.
I got a resume for an Executive Administrator position we were filling for a client. The cover letter was tremendous. The candidate was a guy. I flipped over to his resume. It was 100% audio-visual, corporate event management experience. That’s great experience and could translate well to some Executive Administrator jobs, but the poor guy hadn’t spent one brain cell making that connection clear either in his cover letter or his resume, so he got a No Thanks letter.
Name, Rank and Serial Number
The first thing any resume reviewer is going to ask is “Did this person put time into his or her resume?” In many cases the answer is sadly “Nope.” We want to know where you’ve been and what you accomplished at each place. A resume is not a job application. When a resume lists your job title and dates of employment and maybe two more words, like this: “Managed Accounts” we assume you had no more insight into your contribution than that placeholder. That’s a fail.
Full Metal Zombiespeak
If you, having already performed your job and thus understanding more about it than almost anyone, describe your job using language lifted straight out of the company’s pay-grade manual, that’s not good. We want to see a human being coming through the page. Only human beings get hired.
Impossible Chronology
Check your resume with an eye for the story conveyed in it. Look at the dates you’ve supplied for each job and educational program. If you held a couple of different jobs at the same time or freelanced while you worked, that’s great — but spell it out.
