You’ve spent a lot of time on your resume, right? And you’re really proud of it, right?
Then, you surely want to avoid these six careless errors cited by career coach Don Goodman for Careerealism:
- “You forget to update your contact information.”
- “You don’t provide enough details on your last job.”
- “You don’t update your skills or remove old certifications.”
- “You use abbreviations and acronyms only you may know.”
- “You keep adding to your resume, but you don’t remove irrelevant jobs.”
- “You name you resume file that you send out inappropriately.”
Click the image to read more about these mistakes.
I enjoyed the article Resume Mistakes to Avoid because it is a very helpful when I need to update my Resume next year when I look for a summer internship. While preparing my resume last March I had a few friends who are in Human resources at several companies give me some feedback. I learned mistakes people make is they aren’t honest about what they actually did at their last job and if you aren’t honest you can get fired for giving false information. I also learned that people read 100 of these resumes for one position so you need to make certain you have enough on your resume that can get you in the door for the job. No typos and formatting is really important.
This article is very helpful when you’re re-reading your resume. It’s especially important to remove irrelevant jobs from your resume. Although it looks like you have more experience, it’s more impressive to list jobs that are recent and more important than every single job you’ve had. I never thought of the file name for your resume, either. It’s best to keep it simple without revealing too much information, like the year you updated your resume. I think sometimes people forget that the interviewer are able to view the file name.
I have learned in business classes that the first impression is the most important one. When a recruiter or a company sees an impressive resume, it instantly perceives a potential employee. That is the first chance a person has to capture the employer and make them understand that you are indeed that best candidate for the job. Everyone should always have a great resume, in other words a perfect resume to be able to stand out of the crowd.
At this point and time, we all have had to construct resumes in our life. Whether it be for attending college or a part-time job, resumes are an essential part of the process. We spend numerous hours perfecting them, yet sometimes we make common careless errors like the ones mentioned. One that I always find myself correcting is the name in which the file is under. Numerous times, I save my resume under the job in which I am applying for and constantly find myself changing the name of the file for a new job application. You do not want to send in a resume under a different company name! That is a big no no! As silly as it sounds, it is a common mistake we are guilty of!!! Also, having out of date contact information is an extremely poor reflection on oneself as it shows he/she did not put in the time to update his/her resume. Overall, a resume is the first piece of information an interviewer sees and is his/her first judgment of you. Thus, it must help one’s chance at landing a job instead of hindering it!
My biggest problem with my resume is that whenever I add update job descriptions, I never know what to take off to make room for it. Fortunately Hofstra’s career center and Peggy Ann from the Honor’s College were kind enough to help me edit my resume while I was home in New Hampshire over spring break so that I would have an updated resume to bring for my job shadows. Writing resumes can be stressful and overwhelming, but with the right resources, such as the people I reached out to and now this article, it is easier than trying to manage on your own.