CV TIPS - 3 résumé mistakes that can sabotage your job application

Posted 8th February 2023 • Written by Donna Svei on fastcompany.com • • • • •

To advance your candidacy, I recommend avoiding these three application-sabotaging mistakes:

1. FAILING TO CONVINCE HIRING MANAGERS THAT YOU CAN HIT THE GROUND RUNNING

Many managers want to hire people they don’t have to micromanage.

Because of that, they look at your résumé to learn the following:

• Where you’ve worked
  Your job titles
  How much relevant experience you have
  Your employment stability

Researchers have found that résumés often receive only a seven-second scan. In that short time, recruiters and hiring managers want to know:

• If applicants have the experience they need
  How long they’re likely to stay on the job
  Details such as your former employers, job titles, and employment dates drive decision-makers’ initial short lists. If you know your résumé does not include a specific detail that a hiring manager is looking for, take heart: Even during a rapid scan, decision-makers read résumé headlines. Therefore, be sure to use your résumé headline to demonstrate your ability to solve the manager’s problems.

Make sure your headline catches the attention of hiring managers and demonstrates why you would make a good fit for the role. You want to motivate the decision-maker to go beyond a quick scan and read your whole résumé. Then you want to ensure that it provides facts that confirm your claim.

2. NOT DEMONSTRATING LONG-TERM EMPLOYMENT STABILITY

While that might sound harsh, a record of job-hopping often presages future issues. It may be that the person does not have clear goals, so they keep taking the wrong jobs. Or they might need to work better with others.

Conversely, it is also possible for résumés to come across as too stable.

To prevent that perception, share your accomplishments and their impact on your résumé. Two- to three-line bulleted vignettes will get more looks from readers than bigger blocks of text.

3. WEAK WRITING

First, check to see if your résumé makes sense. To do this, ask someone you respect to read your résumé. Get help, because it’s hard to spot confusing language after you’ve immersed yourself in the document. Fixing simple errors in the readability of your résumé could be the difference between getting an interview or crickets.

And we have to talk about typos and grammatical errors.

To avoid that problem, spell-check your résumé. Then, run it through proofreading software to pop other errors. Typos will not impress hiring managers.

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