The job market is becoming more and more competitive and having a professional resume is the most important to compete. No matter if you are a qualified candidate, a small mistake in a CV is a missed opportunity.
BMG has asked Kristine Chikovani, HR Team Lead at online job platform my.ge, to discuss resume mistakes that keep job seekers from getting a job.
Spelling and grammar mistakes
When you create your resume read it several times or ask your friend to take a look at your contextual spelling mistakes. When you put “detailed oriented” as a skill in your resume, you have to prove it.
According to Career Builder, 77% of hiring managers disqualify resumes with typos or bad grammar.
Using an unprofessional e-mail address
Always put an e-mail address that speaks who you are. Pursuant to Career Builder, 35% of employers will reject your resume if it has an unprofessional email address.
Adding irrelevant information
Avoid including your picture, age, nickname, home address, hobbies, marital status, ID or passport number, information about your family members. Especially putting your ID or passport number will not protect you from further illegal actions by another person.
Irrelevant work information
Many think that including information about every job they had will help to be represented more professional way. For example, if you worked as a waiter at the restaurant for five-month and now you are applying for the content manager job, of course it doesn’t provide any benefit to the employer and to you too.
Irrelevant job summary
Every resume must be updated according to the position you apply to, it should contain a summary appropriate to the position you are applying for.
List obvious skills
Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, or using the Internet are no longer skills. Every employer expects that all good applicants are good at the Office Suite. Instead, put and highlight the technical tools you experience more. For example Google Analytics, SEO, etc. Include the right soft skills which you acquired from them the job you worked for. If you were a client communication manager you can write that you have strong communication skills but if you worked as a content manager your strong side according to the job nature won’t be communication.
Listing education at the top of the page
If you are a recent graduate from the university and you are applying for the entry-level position it's relevant to put information about your education on the top, but if you are an experienced candidate your experience should speak at first.
Avoid Copy/paste of job description
Do not do that, nobody is interested in your job description. What recruiters want to know is what was your results, achievements, and how were your tasks accomplished in your current and past jobs. For example, if you were coaching someone, how you were doing it, if you were a sales manager what was your results reflected in numbers, etc.
Your Resume must not be more than two pages
Recruiters receive a tone of resumes and the recruiters spend less than one minute reading the resumes.
As the study of Career Builder has shown, 39% of HR managers spend less than a minute initially looking at a resume. 19% spend less than 30 seconds.
Save your resume in PDF format, not in Word doc
If you save or Word Doc in an outdated Microsoft package and you will send it to the recruiter who has a new system, be aware that the new system doesn’t always read the document accurately.
Avoid eye-catching design of your resume
The resume should be simple to read, without any extra layouts. If we take a look at the recent trend of resume design we will find out that some of them are like art. Candidates forget that employers read a hundred resumes, even more, and want to quickly find what they are looking for.
Resume must not be outdated
CV should be updated according to the position you are applying for.
