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101 Common Resume (and Job Search) Mistakes
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**includes REAL excerpts from REAL resumes with REAL mistakes
**includes REAL stories of individuals who had wonderful job search success and others who cringe at the memories of some of their experiences!
When applying for an amazing job you found online, a cool position your friend told you about, or a great opportunity you heard about through the grapevine, you get only one chance to make a first impression.
As trite as that sounds, it’s true.
If the cover letter or resume you send to someone (whether via email, snail mail, fax, or hand-delivered) contains even ONE of these common mistakes, don’t hold your breath waiting for a reply.
You won’t get one.
There are literally hundreds upon hundreds of individuals applying for that one same job you are interested in securing; why should a potential employer bother to waste his/her time interviewing YOU (of all the candidates vying for the same position) when you didn’t bother to take the time to get your initial representation of yourself – your resume – perfect? As you read these common errors made by 98% of the job seekers out there, don’t get frustrated, there IS good news (and hope) for you at the end of the list! You still have a chance to make it in that 2% Club.
How do you know if your resume is working? If you don’t get responses, calls, or interviews for jobs to which you have applied that you KNOW you are qualified to do–there is something wrong with your resume. Period. 
The only (and first) impression that potential employer can make of you is from that document you sent him/her; they weren’t unimpressed by your voice, your look, your clothing, your experience, or your ideas. They were unimpressed with your resume and chose not to bother to call you to meet you in person. It’s that simple.
Before we get started with this list of common resume mistakes, grab your resume and place it at the side of your computer. Highlight the areas on your resume that show up on the list here. If your resume has even ONE component from this list, stop sitting around checking your voice mails or your emails waiting for a response from the blitzkrieg of potential employers you contacted with your resume–instead, have Blue Flamingo Productions write and design a brand new resume for you, from scratch. Can you really afford to miss out on any more great job opportunities?
In no particular order, here are common mistakes many people make when first opting to do their own resume (before they finally get frustrated enough with the lack of responses to make the decision to hire America’s oldest and best professional and creative writing service).
In addition to having your resume at your side, you might as well go get a cup of coffee or a can of pop and turn up the volume on your computer so you can listen to the amazing Native American Indian music on this website — it will ease the pain every time you find another cringe-inducing mistake on your current resume.
1) Somewhere on your resume you typed the word M-A-N-G-E-R when you meant to type “Manager” instead. This is a common mistake because “manger” IS a word and would never show up in your spellcheck. Unless you set up Christmas “mangers” at the local churches throughout your town, your typo will stop any top executive from calling you in for an interview. What if you were assigned to type a press release for your boss about “public” rights and you left off the “L” ?? No CEO or HR rep is going to take that chance with you.
2) You type the word “activates” instead of “activities” when you are describing what you like to do when you are not busy making your boss look great. Again (see #1) your laziness or rush to get your resume out there in the universe just cost you a shot at that interview.
3) You write something like “I can build great relationship” –really? Too bad you won’t ever get the chance to prove that at the place where you sent that line since you forgot to add the “s” at the end of that word! Looks like you will be building relationshipS all by yourself. Again. Still.
4) You type your “resume” right into a “response space” when applying/responding to a job online. Do NOT do this! You MUST attach your beautifully-designed and error-free resume as a WORD document (no PDF file, Notepad, or any other not-universally-used program). Use WORD to design and write your resume and ATTACH it as a separate document that the potential employer can open, print, and save. Simply pasting it or typing it into the email is not professional and is not acceptable.
5) You write “and” and “or” but you don’t put the backslash mark between them! You simply (and mistakenly) write “and or” ! It’s “and/or” AND while we are on the subject, it’s “a lot” not “alot” AND it is “which” not “witch” (unless your previous employer required you to fly around on a broom all night).
Ok, I am going to take a break here and share with you that although these examples may look like YOUR mistakes specifically, believe me – these are COMMON (ouch!) mistakes that so many job seekers make. (Does it make you feel better to know that your resume is not alone on that pile of resumes that will never, ever get read, acknowledged, or used to schedule an interview?)
6) You include dates for jobs that you only held for a couple of months. If you had a job for less than a year, and it was a job that is directly related to the field in which you want to pursue a career, include the job but do not put the length of time you were there. You can be asked about that during the phone interview. For example, do not put “1999-1999” or “2004-2005” — while there may be legitimate reasons why you had the job for a short period of time, you don’t need to put all the details about it on the resume; you can answer questions about it during the interview. If the short-term job has absolutely nothing related to the field in which you want to work, exclude it completely OR include it on the bottom/end of the resume under Additional Info section. (The point of a resume is to get a response and to get a chance to talk to someone at the place of employment!)
7) Your tenses don’t match. The first job the reader sees shows that you stopped working there in June of 2011, yet the verbs are all written as if you are still employed there. You write “answer phones, coordinate outfits, and groom dogs” instead of “answerED, coordinatED, and groomED” — make sure all the verbs are in the same tense and all the verbs match present tense or past tense depending on the circumstance.
8) You have months all over your resume! Don’t use months on your resume! No one cares that you started the job in MAY (or on May 1st) and you left the job on July 5th. Get rid of any mention of months. Either replace the months with a season (if you were at the position during a winter internship or you spent a summer in Italy studying the cuisine, the charisma, and the charm of Italians) or simply just write the number of years of service at the position. Adding months is too much (anal retentive) information. That kind of detail goes in the “need to know” category that you can be asked about during an interview or when filling out the application after you get hired! Including months on a resume is distracting; it takes away from the layout and is information that is not necessary. What makes it worse, the folks who include them are the same ones who have skipped around from job to job to job to job (for whatever legitimate or not-so-legitimate reasons) and think that by putting the months make it seem like l-o-n-g-e-r employment than it really was. (“Hey, I worked from the beginning of the month until the end of that other month!”) You’ll never see someone who worked at a job for 10 years stating the month they started and the month they left the position. (Well, you might see that on someone’s resume if he/she has his ex-girlfriend or his aunt’s neighbor’s kid create his resume for him!)
9) You have a ridiculous email address that contains a ton of numbers, the letters “l” and “I” and the number “1” (all that can easily get confused and mixed up), or inappropriate words or phrases. If you email address is something like, “hotboredwife@wherever.com” or “tom69@wherever.com” or “beerguzzler@wherever.com” or “mike112233@wherever.com” — it needs to NOT appear anywhere on your resume. It’s easy to create a new email address; create one that is just your name and is used just for your job searches.
10) #8 leads to this point: the ridiculous message you have on your voice mail. If your voice mail is a religious message, a song about breaking up (meant for your lover), or a crazy message — CHANGE IT IMMEDIATELY! Your message should be short, simple, and professional. NO ONE wants to (or will) sit through a whole rap song about the streets of San Francisco before they can leave a message!
11) Check your punctuation. Don’t end a statement or a line with a “comma” – that’s the thang that looks like this “,” — your statement or line should have NO end punctuation or a period. Perhaps your resume contains a phrase like, “Compassionate, and caring, when dealing with residents.” This is an overuse and abuse of commas. Further, by choosing to use the word “dealing” you make it sound like it is a hassle to interact with the patients/residents. Though you may not be applying for a job as a writer, how you communicate verbally and in writing – matters!
12) Don’t include the year you earned your college degree, and don’t include the year you earned your high school diploma! In fact, don’t include high school on your resume at all unless you NEVER took (and completed) at least one college class and unless the position to which you are applying requires a high school diploma or a G.E.D. By including the year you graduated from ANY school instantly tells the reader (approximately) how old you are. That’s discriminatory information! How old (or young) you are should have no bearing on if you are qualified for the job or not (unless you are 34 and want to be President of the USA).
13) Don’t include the name of your high school — even if it was a private school. These days, it’s not so impressive to share that you attended a private school that is suddenly on the news now for all the wrong reasons.
14) Don’t use all kinds of weird little icons and graphics. They are distracting. Simple bullets will do.
15) Don’t just list words in a series to describe, highlight, or explain what you accomplished in a position; make your words count! What you share under your title for a particular job needs to come to life and mean something!
16) You use a font color other than BLACK. The ONLY color the wording of your resume should be is black. Black is the easiest color to read for a resume. If you want something to stand out on the resume, you can use italicize, underline, or bold it! (If you choose one of these three options, be sure to be consistent throughout your resume; if you are bolding your job title for one job, bold it for all the job titles.)
For the other 85 common mistakes, please order our e-book!
