Top 7 Resume Blunders

Randhir.net launched the Resume Improvement Service in a big way on Resume2Jobs.net in August and followed it up with a Snapdeal.com offer of doing a Basic Critique and Feedback. This received an overwhelming response and kept our team busy all of this month. With this post, we are sharing the Top 7 Mistakes that we found across 80-90% of the CVs that we reviewed.

1. No Consistency: Stay consistent on the Font (Style & Size) you use, the spacing between paragraphs and lines, the tone and tenor of your voice across content and the amount of text you bold and what you bold. This makes your CV look professional & doesn't distract the reader away from the actual content. Pure hygiene factor, but important nonetheless.
2. Not doing a Spell-Check: How long does it take to open your resume in Word and fix the obvious spelling, grammar and punctuation errors? This is criminal and really says that you are not very quality-conscious and that you are satisfied with mediocrity.
3. Incorrect Tense and Incorrect Person Usage: Use past tense (except for maybe the present position) and use abbreviated third person (Randhir managed a team of  ... is replaced by Managed a team of ). More importantly, make sure that you stay consistent on this across your CV. Not following this can be very distracting to a Reader and makes you appear as someone who is not strong in English.
4. Missing (Contact) Information: I found CVs that had missing dates (on Jobs), missing role/title and one of the best (Missing Contact Information). Whatever you do, make sure that your Phone Number and E-mail are accurate and bold/clear at the Top of your CV (Preferably on every page  if you have a multi-page CV).
5. Not having a Professional Summary: CVs are looked at for a split second. If you can't give your 10 sec story at the top of your CV, you are losing a big opportunity for sure. This one is more relevant for someone with 5+ years of diverse experience. But for everyone, this is a way to highlight the most important things about you that you want the Hiring Manager to know.
6. Writing about your Roles and Responsibilities: 90% of the content of most CVs I reviewed could have been pulled out of a Job Description directly. This again is criminal because if you are like any other Java Developer or Sales Professional, you are not telling me why I should hire you and not the 100 other people that have applied for this same job.
7. Missing Specifics: This one's related to Point 6 above. Make sure you get very specific in what you did at your job and what you achieved/accomplished. e.g. Replace "made a business impact" by "saved US$ 3 MM" and "Appreciated by Client" by "Appreciated by multiple Senior Client Execs for the innovative solution that saved over US$ 1.5mn".

If you can make sure you avoid these, your CV is probably better than at least 50-70% of your competition depending on your industry/sector. This is what I saw from my experience over the past 3 months. Take a look at your current CV and let me know which of these are mistakes you have made. If you feel, there are others that belong here, please do post your feedback/comments either in the comments section below or on our Facebook Page.

Bio: Randhir Hebbar is a seasoned Resume Development Expert (Website: Resume2Jobs.net) and Hiring Manager with 10 years of experience in IT/ITES/Analytics Consulting. For any of your resume development needs, he can be reached at cv2randhir@gmail.com or on the phone at +91.9945.254742. We are also on Facebook (here and here) and on LinkedIN.