Resume Tips: How to Overcome the Top 3 Resume Mistakes

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4 years ago

Do you feel like you slave over your resume and never get anywhere in your job search? It’s not a surprise, considering — on average — recruiters look at a resume for just seven seconds. You do not have a ton of time to differentiate yourself from others, even if you have better qualifications. I spend a lot of my time reading resumes as part of my Create a Standout Resume e-Course. I see the same 3 resume mistakes in almost every resume. In this post, I’ll give you key resume tips to overcome these top 3 resume mistakes!

Resume Tips: How to Overcome the Top 3 Resume Mistakes

No Quantification of Results

You need to show the hiring manager that you can drive to an impact. If you just simply describe your responsibilities, then you risk seeming like an employee who just shows up to “check the box.” Why should the hiring manager choose you? Many people can simply show up and go through the motions.

So, you need to show you can make an impact.

How do you show an impact?

You need to have quantifiable results in your resume. Quantifiable results include things like, “Increased revenue by x%” or “Increased customer satisfaction scores by 2x.”

These quantifiable results convey to the hiring manager that you can deliver a business impact.

Here is an example from a resume of someone I worked with via my Create a Standout Resume course (identifiable information and some details changed to protect anonymity for this and other examples):

I could tell from talking with this job applicant that he had a great deal of impact on his company and the people he worked with. However, I did not see that impact on his resume. I saw a lot of responsibility and a lot of work….but I didn’t know “to what end?”

Anyone could have done these activities; hiring managers want to know is “were you successful?” They want to know: what was the result of this work?

So, you need to include bullets that convey the impact you had. Here is what I suggested to the candidate as part of the resume review I do in my course:

As you can see, the second version makes the candidate stand out and differentiates him from other candidates. The hiring manager can see how his contributions made a difference. As a result, he or she wants this candidate on their team!

So, be sure you have quantifiable results on your resume!

The most common resume question I get through my e-course is:

“what if my job doesn’t have quantifiable results?”

Don’t worry. It’s a common issue. Many roles are critical to a company but do not have a direct impact on key company metrics.

In this scenario, you need to describe the impact in terms of “what changed as a result of your work?”

For example, I have spent much of my career in analytics…overseeing market research and data collection, and making recommendations based on insights from that information. So, much of my career does not tie directly to business metrics.

Here are some of the bullets I have on my resume (with some details removed):

Created a business case for a corporate reorganization; recommendation resulted in a $4.5 M restructuring effort
Developed business case for a marketing program, which resulted in program approval (est. $65 M in additional revenue)

So, you can see I described and quantified the results of my recommendations, rather than my direct impact on sales, costs, customer satisfaction, etc.

2. Not Tying Your Resume to Required Job Skills

In some ways, your resume is a sales pitch. You need to sell to the hiring manager that you have the right experiences for the job. In order to do that, you need to tailor the experiences on your resume to the job that you want.

Look at the job description. There is usually a list of required skills and/or experiences. Your resume should say those exact things.

Here is an example of a resume for another student in my e-course who was applying to a management role:

Besides some readability issues (i.e., no bullet points), the issue here is that the resume tells me that this job applicant is a really great employee…but not a manager. All of the information about his work experience describes someone who does the work exceptionally well, but nothing about managing the work.

When we looked at the job description for the role he was applying to, I saw it required skills that typical of managers, such as “Resource Allocation,” “Development,” and “Leading Improvements.”

Here is where we went next with his resume during my Create a Standout Resume e-course:

As you can see, we changed some of the formatting issues. We also more directly addressed the experiences required for the job of a manager (as noted in the job description), such as resource allocation decisions, leading improvements, and the development of others.

So, you need to match the work experiences on your resume directly to the requirements of the job you want. Consider using the exact same language.

3. Too Much Detail

You should only say as much as the hiring manager needs to see. Too often, job candidates write down every last detail and the key information gets buried.

Here’s an example from a student in my Create a Standout Resume e-course:

I highlighted the key areas we focused on.

Does the hiring manager need to know how many days the trade shows were? Does he/she need to know the specifics about the new kid’s products and their comparator products?

With all of this excess information, you’re going to distract from the 1 thing you want to convey: your ability to have a big impact in the job for which you are applying.

Here is what I suggested back to the student in my course:

Hopefully, you can see how cutting out detail and focusing on the information relevant to the candidate’s responsibilities and impact makes a big difference!

If you liked this article on resume tips and avoiding resume mistakes, and are ready to make a serious effort to update your resume, our Create a Standout Resume e-course is a great place to start.

It does include specific steps to writing your resume, but the most of the results come from the 1:1 resume review done by us at Mrs. Type A. We don’t just tell you what should change, we tell you what to write instead (much like you can see above).

If you are ready to make some changes in your career, this is the ONLY place you should start. We will teach you exactly how to make the necessary changes to your resume to set you up for a successful job search!

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