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Resume Mistakes to Avoid

• Overdoing the Appearance: The days in which you used heavy-weighted resume paper, fancy embellishments and borders, and elaborate designs are over. Employers do not have time to look past all of the distractions to get to your qualifications. Many of our styles are direct and to the point.
  
  Most of the time, these designs are considered distracting and unnecessary, especially because most resume submissions are completed online in the current job market. The bottom line is, employers do not care about how artsy your design is. They do care how qualified you are to fill their job position.
• Including an Objective Statement: Objective statements are antiquated, and employers actually dislike them when they notice them on resumes. They dislike them because objective statements are all about what you want from a job. The job market has shifted to make it so that it is all about what you should be able to provide to a company. The option is available in our creator if you do choose to include one.
• Writing in Paragraph Form: A resume is not supposed to be composed of an endless essay about yourself and your accomplishments. Your various sections should be composed of bulleted lists made up of no more than twelve words per bullet point.
• Assuming a Functional Format is More Desirable than Chronological: Of course, the two most popular formats of resumes are both applicable in particular situations. However, most employers are accustomed and more comfortable with functional resume styles rather than chronological style resumes. For more information about these two styles see our functional and chronological formats tutorial.
• Not Tailoring Your Resume for Specific Jobs/Companies: You cannot maintain the same resume for each position which you apply. Change the information that is displayed, depending on the position for which you are applying. That will demonstrate your determination and specific qualifications for each job for which you are applying. You can include action verbs and keyword optimization techniques as an additional method to make it more specific.
• Having a Resume Longer than One Page: No matter how much information you believe you need to display, try to create the document to be one page in length. Keep the information short and sweet, and most importantly, relevant.
• Sharing Too Much Personal Information: Do not describe your hobbies or any other irrelevant personal information. This document is a part of your professional portfolio that represents the minimum (and best) career-related accomplishments that you would like to share with the employer.
• Including "References Upon Request:" It is becoming less common to list this anywhere on your resume. It may make you appear unprepared or unreliable because you couldn't provide the references upfront. You should have a separate page that lists your references. Feel free to utilize our Free Reference Page Creator so that you will have a properly formatted reference page that you will quickly and easily create. We also have a tutorial on how to write a reference page.
• Not Elaborating on Employment Details: Your previous employment is incredibly important to a recruiter, and you cannot assume that they are aware of every detail of each company for which you have worked. Use bullet points to elaborate on the details of your previous employment to give employers a sense of what you have done.