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3 resume gaffes you can easily avoid

3 resume gaffes you can easily avoid

A hiring manager or a recruiter receives hundreds of resumes in a day. Although the recruiter won’t look at each and every resume, some do stand out due to their quality, or lack of it. Your resume is the very first impression that you can make on a prospective employer. A resume is your opportunity to advertise your skills to an organization, where you are interested in working.

You will probably have the perfect qualifications and experience for the job and the resume template that you use might be quite sophisticated. However, there are certain thing that can go wrong and land your resume straight in the trash. There are certain common mistakes that recruiters watch out for weed out good resumes from the average ones. These mistakes, or gaffes that you make in your resume can be easily avoided, if you are mindful of how you are putting in all the information. To get you started, here we have a list of 5 common mistakes people tend to make in their resumes.

  • Incorrect contact information:
    This is one of the most essential information in your resume. Even if you are overtly careful, there might be some missing, incorrect and even inappropriate contact information. Here is a checklist for you to cross-check whether you have all the necessary information in your resume:
  • Complete legal name
  • Complete e-mail address
  • Complete mailing address
  • Phone number with area and international codes
  • An alternate phone number
  • Also, check whether all the information is correct. Many people tend to pick up their old resumes and update only the education, skills and experience sections. Make sure that you update the address and mobile number as well, if there are any changes.
  • Inappropriate e-mail id:
    Have an email id that is professional, and not fun. Recruiters are not interested how creative you can be with your mail id. It is best to do away with email ids you used as a teenager, and make a new one that is formal. For instance, “dragonslayer88” is probably a cool id for a gaming website, but not your resume. Keep it as simple as possible.
  • Typos, spelling, and grammatical mistakes:
    A crucial part of the screening process for recruiters is checking all resumes for typos, spelling and common grammatical mistakes. Be wary of homophones. Puns are funny when you are joking with friends, but not in your resumes. Proofread your resume multiple times. Ask a friend to prof read it again. You can also run your resume through software that does spell-checks and proofreading. You will find many such grammar checkers online.