Wash These Things From Your Resume To Get the Job

You have a product to sell, and you can only use an advertisement to convince them to buy it. Customers will buy if you provide the right information that meets their needs and makes a good impression of you. Customers will ignore your message if you mess up with your communication.

This is the same as your resume. Your resume sells your skills, experience, education, and accomplishments to employers. Companies need your skills, knowledge, and abilities to solve their problems. They can only see you as a solution to their problems when you promote the right skills. This is why you need to invest a lot of time in building your resume.

A bad resume easily turn off employers. According to Ladders, recruiters only use 7.4 seconds to review a candidate’s resume. Now, count 7 seconds. This comes very quickly. You have a few seconds to make an impression, which can qualify you for an interview.

You have to try as much as possible to stand out because you are not the only one applying for the job or opportunity. Avoid mistakes on your resume to produce a clean sheet that easily attract and persuade employers. Below are some of the things to avoid on your resume.

Four resume mistakes to avoid

1. Grammatical errors

This is one of the biggest red flags. No one is willing to work with someone who doesn’t pay attention to details. Proofread your document after putting every piece of information together, and allow someone you trust to go through it a second time if possible.

2. Sharing your CV in Word format

You should save your resume in both PDF and Word. The Word document will serve as a template when changes or adjustments need to be made. Share the PDF document with your employer in order not to alter your formatting or vital information. A Word document can look different when viewed on another device. Share a PDF to keep your formatting intact.

3. Tables and text boxes

It is common to use borderless tables to align your text on the resume. Some companies pass applicants’ resumes through an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and tables can make it difficult for these systems to read your resume. If the ATS discovers inconsistencies or compatibility issues, it may reject your resume. You can use the various alignment options in Microsoft Office to align your text.

4. Present tense

Your resume is used to advertise your skills and the things you have achieved in your career journey. Your achievements have already happened and should not be listed in the present tense. Let’s say you were the Finance Officer at your previous company. You will write this:

Processed invoices

And not this:

Process invoices

You take your resume to the next level when you add quantifiable or measurable achievements. From the above example, you can say:

Processed invoices faster which helped to pay 100 vendors on time.

Just make sure you are providing authentic information. Again, start all your sentences with a verb, not a pronoun (I).

Your resume can give or take away a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Pay attention to these mistakes and treat your resume with all respect.