Three Very Common Resume Mistakes When Sending to Recruiters

While there are an abundance of resume mistakes that job seekers make when working with headhunters, there are a few that stand out. These include the following 3:

1. Thinking Outside of the Box When Applying to Corporate - The more corporate a company is, the less any job seeker wants to stand out on their resume. This is despite the company's call for "entrepreneurial-minded individuals."

The reason being is that the first person to peruse your resume is trained to look for only a certain number of things prior to passing the document on to a more senior member. As one could image, fancy graphics and Microsoft Word artistry are not high on the skill checklist.

Rather, there are a few key points the initial screener is set out to seek and the rest is put aside. However, if you stand out as a potential "red light" to this individual meaning that your "entrepreneurial antics" can get them in trouble, you're not going to be submitted.

Remedy - If you think this entrepreneurial and outside the box, chances are that you are not going to be happy in such a structured environment. It is recommend that you either strip down the fanciness of the CV or continue to look for jobs at small, more intimate companies.

2. Too Much Content, Not Enough Formatting - While too many bullet points and too few tangible descriptions can hurt, so can long-winded paragraphs about your duties at your last position.

This is especially the case when the resume is written in a hard to read font. The top hiring companies and recruiting firms are inundated with resumes nearly every 5 or so minutes, your resume may be full of information that is pertinent to the job at hand, but if you don't guide the reader's eye, chances are they'll become fatigued looking for it and move on to the next one.

Remedy - Have a judicious mix of bullet points, bolding and line-breaks throughout your resume. If you find that you are writing paragraphs over 3 sentences, stop and figure out a way to extract the pertinent information and make it easier to find.

You could have the best resume out there, but if nobody reads it, it will it do no justice.

3. Not Listening to Submission Instructions - There is nothing that looks worse than those who think they are a special case. When applying to a job, regardless of how spot-on of a match you are and how excited you are to get that resume in the inbox of the recipient, keep within regulations.

This means that if the application instructions say 2 pages max on your resume, don't submit 3 pages.

Many times job seekers mistake resume instructions for meaning that their submission is going to go to a bottomless pit of an inbox, when it simply may be a HR process that has been going on for years and has nothing to do with the sort.

However, 90% of the time when job seekers buck the submission rules simply to get noticed, they get passed over without even a glance at their credentials.

Remedy - While remedying this habit is more of a self-discipline that needs to be learned rather than a resume tweak, be sure that the more "special submissions" you submit, the more lost opportunities you're going to have regardless of resume content, format or credentials.

In Closing:

Even if you've made the above mistakes recently, it's never too late to change your resume accordingly as well as beginning to follow resume submission rules.