7 Resume Blunders You Can't Afford to Make

Unless you started an internet company and sold it for millions, or found a cure for cancer, putting together a resume before you’ve found your first real job is the task most young people hate more than any other. It is the most important first step, yet the one most often flubbed. I’ve seen many resumes and there are some basic mistakes that just about everyone makes:

1. TOO LONG

You don’t need half a page to explain your duties and responsibilities during that summer job you had as a camp counselor. Your entire resume should never exceed one page. Not only is it a mistake to try to tell every detail of your work and academic experience, it shows you’re trying too hard to impress.

And sometimes it’s just absurd. In an article about ridiculous resumes on BusinessInsider.com, a hiring executive for a retail store reported receiving one that was five pages long and included a list of the applicant’s responsibilities at a pizza shop:

Put crust on pizza plate;

Spread sauce on crust;

Add cheese to sauce;

Add toppings (if ordered).

One young lady who applied to work with our company came in with a resume that was fifteen pages long. Each thing that she had done, every community service project, had its own very long paragraph about the organization and what she was doing there. I’m sure it was a lot of great stuff, but I wouldn’t know because I never read past the first page.

A resume is not an essay question. It’s kind of a table of contents of your activities that are relevant to your work potential. The more you try to cram into it, the more desperate you appear, the more excuses you give someone to throw your resume away. The less you tell, the more you leave to the imagination. It’s why strippers come out on stage with their clothes on. The resume is supposed to tease someone into wanting to know more.

For example, you could spend half a page describing all your training and duties as a lifeguard, right down to the scores you got on your lifesaving test. Or you could just put down something like this:

Summer 2013: Certified Water Safety First Responder, Pleasant Valley Community Pool, Nirvana, USA

Let the person reading the resume fill in the blanks: you had to take certification courses (shows commitment and persistence); you had to achieve certain physical benchmarks (shows good health and self-respect); you worked a job that required vigilance to protect the lives of others (shows responsibility); and you worked as a team member in an organization (shows ability to work with others). You don’t have to say any of those things. The reader of your resume knows what a lifeguard does.

This goes without saying, but perhaps leave out the Larry the Cable Guy joke in your interview: "I used to be a lifeguard until some blue kid got me fired."


Just to clarify, this was not a racist joke about blue people.


Finally, do NOT put on your resume “references upon request.” It’s pretentious and out of date. If you happen to have a glowing recommendation letter from an employer or some other person in a position to offer an objective opinion (NOT your uncle) that’s relevant to your experience and skills, by all means attach it. Otherwise, you’re wasting space. You will be asked to provide references. You don’t have to offer.

2. TOO MANY

It’s a resume red flag for me when I see that someone has worked at many different jobs before they’ve graduated college. I see a lot of students come in who have only been working for four years and they’ve had eight jobs.

They think that the way to earn more is to bounce around, always taking the next higher paying gig. Or they think it shows they have a lot of experience. What it really shows is a lack of loyalty at best, and suggests some sort of sociopathic problem at worst. It tells a potential employer that they are probably only going to have you for a short period of time because you’re going to just go on looking for the next better thing or you’ll turn out to be a bad fit.

Training you in a new job is time-consuming and costly. Employers prefer to hire people who will stick around long enough for the training to pay off. Employers want to see consistency. They like to see themes—several jobs in the same industry, for example. They like to see progression in responsibilities. They especially like to see that someone has worked with the same company or at the same job summer after summer, year after year.

3. UPSIDE DOWN

We’re all proud as punch that you were editor of the high school literary magazine, or got on dean’s list at college, but that’s not the basis on which an employer will hire you. So don’t put your academic credentials at the top. Put them at the bottom. 

At the top you should list your work experience, unless it’s babysitting and lawn mowing, or your experience as a volunteer, if it shows initiative, leadership, teamwork, and so on.

A study by research firm Harris Interactive for American Express found that educational background was the least important factor among hiring professionals. The study found that 62% said personality traits such as communication skills and good attitude are the qualities they look for most when interviewing. Significantly fewer gave such high importance to candidates qualifications/skill set (36%), intelligence/ knowledge (23%), work history (11%), or educational background (10%). 

4. THE I-RESUME

Avoid using the first person. Instead of “I was a literacy teacher in a summer school program and I worked with first and second graders,” the format should be something like this:

Summer 2013: Literacy Instructor-Happy Valley Elementary. Summer school program for first and second graders.

 Instead of “I was responsible for managing a team of five people who were committed to providing excellent customer service,” try, “Team leader for five customer service representatives.”

HOWEVER, you should avoid referring to yourself in the third person: “The applicant desires an entry-level position in which the applicant can grow.” It’s clumsy and sounds ridiculously pompous. See “Objectionable Objectives” below for more on this subject.

5. TOO FANCY

A common mistake is to use fancy or “fun” fonts, colors, and distracting design elements. Unless you’re studying graphic design and you want to show a graphic design company how clever and creative you are with your resume, the safest way to go is plain white paper or background, a common font (Times, Helvetica, etc.), without italics or bold-face elements, the same font size throughout (minimum 12 pt), black ink only, and wide margins that leave plenty of white space.

DO NOT CAPITALIZE WHOLE WORDS! IT SOUNDS LIKE SHOUTING!

6. OBJECTIONABLE OBJECTIVES

If I never see another resume with the words “creative,” “innovator,” “visionary,” and “passionate” in the summary at the top—the Objective—it’ll be too soon. Steve Jobs, the late founder of Apple, was an innovator once he had invented something and started his company. Until then, he was a kid in his parents’ garage with a soldering iron and a crazy idea. You might be a visionary, but unless you’ve got something on your resume to prove it, keep your visions to yourself. You might be creative, but unless you have evidence and the job you’re applying for specifically calls for it, telling people you are comes across as BS.

The rule is show, don’t tell.

Here are some words and cliches that hiring executives hate the most in cover letters and resumes:

What You Write                              What A Recruiter Hears

Hard Worker                                     Desperate

Self-Starter                                        Needs supervision

Team Player                                     Lacks initiative

Highly Qualified                               Desperate

Dynamic                                             ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)

Problem Solver                                 Crazy-maker

Reliable                                              Seat warmer

Flexible                                               Desperate

People Person                                  Social butterfly

Employers want to see that you’ve had experience and developed skills that are important in any business or profession. According to a study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (Stats On College Grads 2012), the top skills/qualities employers look for in recent grads are:

The Top-10 Candidate Skills/Qualities Employers Seek 

1. Ability to verbally communicate with persons inside and outside the organization
2. Ability to work in a team structure
3. Ability to make decisions and solve problems
4. Ability to plan, organize, and prioritize work
5. Ability to obtain and process information
6. Ability to analyze quantitative data
7. Technical knowledge related to the job
8. Proficiency with computer software programs
9. Ability to create and/or edit written reports
10. Ability to sell or influence others

You will be unable to persuade anyone that you have any of those unless you have evidence of them or of training on your resume. Let your work and other history speak for itself.

If you have a definite objective (entry-level position in a law firm),  and you’re applying to law firms, by all means say so. Otherwise, try writing a summary in shorthand: Recent grad, enjoys working with the public in customer service roles, strong writer, organized, efficient, and ambitious.

7. TOO SLOPPY

This is the big one, the mistake that so many young people make without realizing how damaging it is to their prospects. It’s rare to find a resume from a young person that is free of any typos and grammatical errors, but there is absolutely no excuse for it. Errors and statements that sound dumb are automatic disqualifiers, always avoidable, and sometimes hilarious. No resume should be submitted without a thorough proof-reading, preferably by several people other than yourself.

First, some basics:

If your e-mail address is babelicious@yahoo or sirspanxalot@gmail—or just sounds dumb or cute—get a new email account that uses your proper name. You might have to use underscores, periods, dashes, or numbers to get one that includes your proper name, but do it. However, don’t use your birth year as a number in your email address. Recruiters will guess your age, which may limit your opportunities.

Your email is how people will contact you and what it says will count against you if its frivolous or offensive.

Avoid using post office boxes in your address. It arouses suspicion.

Never, ever lie. Many people who have achieved enormous success lost everything when it was discovered many years later that the resume they submitted claimed a degree they never earned or a job they never worked. These days, assume you’ll get caught and you’ll resist the temptation.

Typos and sloppy proof-reading often produce glaring errors and attempts at humor that can come across as bizarre. Here are a few actual quotes from resumes and cover letters, collected on the website resumania.com:

Interests: Tuxedos.

Skills: Simulating earthquakes by shaking tables.

References: My girlfriend.

Job Duties: Tracking competitor activities, scheming.

Education: Studied public rations.

Job Duties: Manage artificial workload.

Work History: Faxed documents to attorneys over sees.

Objective: To get an opportunity to proof what I know.

Cover Letter: Hire me today and take advantage of a diamond in the ruff.

Accomplishments: I've learned to say 'excuse me' in 11 languages.

Cover Letter: To creeat creeactions that satisfy both my customers and my creeactivity.

Skills: I can type without looking at thekeyboard.

Skills: Computers and off ice machines.

Employer: Myself. Received pay raise for high sales.

Objective: I prefer a fast-paste work environment.

References: A pond request.

One of the saddest stories I ever heard about a resume fail was submitted to a resume-humor site by the owner of a retail store. Some earnest-looking young guy stopped in one hot summer day to drop off his resume. He had a backpack and stack of resumes. He was sweating profusely and said he had been walking all over town dropping off resumes all day.

After he left, the store owner looked at it and realized the guy had forgotten to put his name or address on it. He’d been walking all over town in that hot sun enthusiastically distributing useless resumes.

A good resume is short, sweet and to the point. However, you will find many opinions as to the details. A friend who works for a large educational firm serving college students sees many people entering the “real” job market for the first time.  She has some great advice and a caution for anyone who needs to create a resume.

“It’s true that there are standards and conventions for writing a good resume. However, it is also true that most hiring managers, career coaches, and HR (human resources) professionals tend to disagree on what those standards and conventions are. Job seekers are advised to ask at least three people who know about resumes to review and edit their resume before submittal. You can bet that all three will have differing opinions on what makes a resume perfect. And you can also bet all three will change it, and change it some more, then change it again.”

For more help on your resume and getting that dream job, check out my book, No Shorts, Flip Flops, or Sunglasses: How to Get and Make the Most of Your First Real Job.