Avoid these resume writing pitfalls in 2024

Creating a well-balanced resume that showcases your experience as well as your skills is a delicate task. Some job seekers fail to write a resume that highlights their accomplishments and are often ignored by recruiters, despite their excellent skills. Although it takes a lot more than a great resume to get you hired, having the perfect resume would certainly help your chances. Today, we will look at some common resume writing pitfalls that you should know about.

Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors

No matter which article you read, spelling and grammar mistakes will be somewhere around the top of the list of resume mistakes. It’s very easy to misspell a word on your resume. If you proofread your resume as soon as you write it, you may never even see the mistakes at all. Take an hour or two away from your resume before you proofread. Do several rounds of proofreading to make sure that you catch all the typos.

Redundancy

Does your resume repeat information? This is not a good thing. This happens most of the time when you have had several work experiences that are similar to each other. To avoid redundancy, focus on describing different aspects of the jobs when you talk about similar roles on your resume.

Sheer length

If your resume rambles onto a fifth page, you have a big problem at hand. Hiring managers are not impressed by longer resumes. They have to review multiple resumes a day and a too-long resume will take up a lot of time to review. It is generally advised to keep your resume below two or three pages. However, this rule does not apply to resumes in academia. If you are writing a resume for a scholarship or an academic purpose, your resume might be even six pages long.

Personal information

There is no need to mention personal information such as your age, birthday, race, religion, or social security number on a resume. In fact, you should not even list your full physical address on a resume. Since resumes are shared electronically and uploaded to job boards, sharing too much personal information on your resume can expose you to threats like identity theft. Also, there is a risk that you may face discrimination during the hiring process due to the irrelevant personal information on your resume.

Casual language

Do you use a lot of personal pronouns when writing a resume? A resume is meant to be written in the third person. Therefore, pronouns such as I, me, my, or we should be omitted from the document. Avoid talking about yourself in the first person. Use professional language and tone to narrate your career story on your resume.

Job duties instead of accomplishments

Do you add long lists of job duties to describe your past work experience? That is a practice that you must stop right now. Always describe your past work experiences using the professional accomplishments you have achieved in the role. Quantify the achievements to make a bigger impact.

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