Writing a resume requires discipline. After all, one page isn’t very much when it comes to recapping your career.
If you’re looking for a new job, it’s important to remember that a resume should act more like a highlight reel than a deep dive into you and your history. While you should design your resume however you wish, there are a few common mistakes to avoid.
Here are seven of the most common resume mistakes and how to fix them.
1. Using a cool but hard-to-read font. Unless you’re going for a career in graphic design, leave the font as something simple like Calibri, Times New Roman, Garamond or Arial. You don’t want someone to be turned off by you just because they literally can’t read what you’ve written.
2. Listing jobs from oldest to newest. You may feel like your first job, where you spent 10 years, was the most significant of your career, but don’t be tempted to put it first — stick to a reverse chronological order, where you have your most recent position first and work back from there. If you want to make sure an employer pays attention to what you did at an earlier job, add a heftier description of your responsibilities underneath.
3. Failing to include a summary or objective. Including a short summary of who you are and your major achievements right at the top of your resume can save your hiring managers some extra work and get to the essence of you are (you can customize this for each company you send it to). The purpose is to offer an easy-to-read snapshot of you and your accomplishments. Put things like “Increased sales by X over Y years” and “television producer with 10 years of experience in news.” The format should look like the rest of your resume.
4. Mixing you awards and distinctions in with everything else. Some people like to sprinkle the awards and distinctions they’ve acquired throughout their resume. If doable, the better scenario would be to create a separate section. People naturally gravitate toward reading the first bit of every section (instead of taking in every word of an entire resume), so do yourself a favor and create a separate section to highlight some of your most worthy accomplishments. This can also include specific skills and courses.
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5. Leaving little white space. You may be tempted to cram in every last detail about every last job, but you may be doing yourself a disservice. If your resume doesn’t have adequate margins (at least 0.8 inches), or the text is ridiculously small, a hiring manager is going to have a very hard time reading it and may just push it aside. Remember, a resume is just supposed to be a teaser; leave in only what’s relevant so that you can maximize the white space on the page.
6. Including irrelevant information. You may feel like your resume is on the skimpy side, especially if you’re early in your career. Don’t sweat it — be honest about what you’ve done, and enjoy the beauty of not having to cram everything into a small space. If you’re tempted to pad your resume with information irrelevant to you or your achievements, like the time you worked as a babysitter 10 years ago, it’s probably worth leaving out. An employer will respect you for being clear and direct than for filling your resume with padding.
7. Not sending your file as a PDF. If you’re emailing your resume, consider converting it to a PDF before you send — otherwise, if you have any strange underlined words that show up in Microsoft Word, or any text boxes, your hiring manager will see them.
Bonus tip: As you prepare for the job search, remember to think beyond your resume. Use sites such as Comparably to find out how employees feel about the companies you’re applying to, and see how much people like you get paid.
