17 Resume Mistakes, Myths, and Mayhem

Not getting the call backs from employers?

Sent your resume to, like, a million companies and…crickets?

Here is little confusion, bedlam, and pandemonium that comes with preparing your resume. If you think any of these statements are true, you better get your butt in front of my FREE 3 Secrets to Get Your Resume Noticed webinar!

Related: The First 7 Steps to Career Change Success

Let’s roll…

  • My resume should be one page. That’s what everyone tells me and “everyone” is always correct!
  • My resume needs an objective statement because it’s really important for the employer to know what I want. Who cares if it wastes the most prime real estate on the resume? I’m that awesome.
  • And, I’m not putting a summary at the top either because recruiters don’t want a summary. They just want me to get right to it. They’re busy, ya know?
  • I’ll cite my skills up top in a nice tabular list. People like lists and they want to see I have good leadership, project management, and organizational skills. I mean, who doesn’t love lists? Especially lists filled with my opinions of myself?
  • I’m definitely not putting numbers in it either. I can’t quantify what I do. Numbers just aren’t a part of what I do. Besides, my job is to help my employer avoid problems, so I can’t really show off how awesome I am on the resume because I’m SO good at my job no problems ever arise.
  • I’m gonna stuff my resume with keywords because that’s the way the applicant tracking systems recognizes you’re a good fit. That’s why I write my resume for a computer. Applicant tracking systems weed out the good candidates and a human never sees my resume anyhow.
  • I’m gonna toss in some graphs too. Graphs are cool. Mine has a bunch of dots in the upper right quadrant. That’s because I’m strong and deep in all da skillz.
  • Oh, I gotta make sure I don’t have any gaps in my timeline either. Gaps cause instant resume death.
  • I almost forgot! Where’s my picture? Gotta photoshop that sucker first, but I need it for the top of my resume. Brad Pitt’s got nothing on me. The employer is prolly gonna hire me on looks alone.
  • I’m also gonna include every single thing I’ve ever done because thick, dense content is more important than the layout.
  • I’ll put my title on the left column of the resume. Who cares about the company name? It’s all about me. Oh. Wait. Better yet, I’ll make one of those swanky “functional resumes” so I can group all the companies where I was a project manager. That won’t give anyone a headache trying to decipher where I was during 2012 and 2015.
  • And, I better not forget those quotes from those people I bribed to say nice things about me. Everyone loves testimonials and references on a resume. Or, if you need to save space, do what I do and just put “References available upon request for a small fee.” That always shows employers you’re important when you charge for stuff.
  • Why would I put volunteer work on my resume? Employers only wanna see the stuff I get paid for.
  • Of course the interviewer wants to know I run marathons. I should put my time down too. That’ll give us somethin’ to talk about.
  • I don’t have a degree so I’m not putting those 97 hours of college credits I have. Whew. Avoided a sticky one there.
  • Let’s see…which one of my eight resumes should I use for this job?
  • I’m confused. My resume is awesome and I carefully wrote and polished every one of those 1,579 words. I thought recruiters read the resume from top left to bottom right and every word in between. What’s up with the no call backs?