Most resumes are not rejected for one big flaw. They lose the reader through several small ones in the first few seconds. Each fix below takes minutes. Go through the list with your resume open.
1. Two columns, tables or text boxes
They look tidy on screen and often come out scrambled when a parser reads them. Your job title can end up next to a skill from the sidebar. Use one column and plain text.
2. Contact details in the page header
Some systems skip the header and footer area of a document. Put your name, phone, email and city in the body of the page, at the top.
3. Creative section names
"My Journey" and "What I Bring" confuse parsers and slow down people. Use Experience, Education and Skills.
4. Skill bars and rating dots
"Excel ●●●●○" tells a recruiter nothing they can check, and a parser reads it as nothing at all. Write the skill and where you used it.
5. Saving as an image or a scan
If you cannot select text in your PDF, no system can read it. Export from your editor as PDF, then try to highlight a line to confirm. The PDF or Word guide covers which format to send.
6. Duties instead of results
"Responsible for managing inventory" repeats the job description. "Cut stock-outs from weekly to once a quarter by setting reorder points in the inventory system" shows what you changed. Lead with a strong verb and end with the result, or paste the bullet into the bullet point generator.
7. No numbers anywhere
Numbers make claims concrete and catch a skimming eye. Count anything you can: customers served, budget managed, hours saved, people trained, error rate reduced. An honest estimate written as "about" is better than none.
8. An objective about what you want
"Seeking a challenging role where I can grow my skills" is about you. Replace it with a two-line summary about what you offer. See resume summary examples, or draft one with the summary generator.
9. The same resume for every job
A general resume matches no job well. Reorder bullets and adjust words for each post. The 20-minute tailoring method shows what to change.
10. Old or irrelevant detail
Your high school, a part-time job from twelve years ago, "References available on request", Microsoft Word as a skill. Each takes space from something that would help. Keep the last ten to fifteen years in detail and compress the rest into one line.
11. Typos and inconsistent formatting
A typo in a resume reads as carelessness, especially for roles that ask for attention to detail. So do mixed date formats, a missing full stop on one bullet out of twenty, or two fonts. Read the resume aloud once, slowly, before you send it.
Spell-checkers miss the worst typos because they are real words: manger for manager, form for from, pubic for public. Search your resume for each of those before you send it.
12. An unprofessional email or a broken link
Use an address built on your name. Click every link on the resume, on your phone, before sending. A portfolio link that needs a login or shows a 404 is worse than no link. The guide to adding a portfolio link covers how to show it.
A two-minute final check
- Copy all the text from your PDF and paste it into a plain editor. Is it all there, in order?
- Does every recent bullet start with a verb and end with a result?
- Would someone reading only the top third know what job you want?
- Is the file named with your name and the role?
Mistakes by career stage
Some mistakes cluster at particular points in a career. Check the ones for your stage twice.
- Students and graduates: a skills list with no proof, school grades from years ago, and a two-page resume with one page of content. Lead with projects. See resume format for freshers.
- Career changers: a resume that reads like the old job, with the old job's jargon. Translate your results into the new field's words. See career change resume.
- Mid-career: ten bullets under every job, including jobs from fifteen years ago. Cut older roles to a title, a company and one result.
- Senior and executive: a list of responsibilities with no scale. Name the team size, budget and revenue you owned. See executive resume format.
How to find your own mistakes
You cannot see your own resume clearly after the tenth edit. Three tricks help. Change the font size to 14 points for a read-through, which makes it feel like a new document and slows your eye down. Read it from the last line to the first to catch typos without following the meaning. And print it, or open it on your phone, since a different screen shows spacing problems you missed.
Then read the top third only and ask one question: does this say what job I want and why I fit it? If the answer takes more than ten seconds to find, that is the first thing to fix.
Why small mistakes cost more than they should
A recruiter working through a pile of applications is looking for reasons to move on, because they have to cut the pile down to a short list. A typo, a jumbled layout or a vague top third gives them that reason before they reach your best bullet. None of these say anything about how good you are at the job. They make it harder for the reader to find out. Fixing them clears the way for the part of your resume that does the persuading.
The same goes for systems. A resume that a parser cannot read is not rejected by a clever algorithm. It simply never appears in a recruiter's search, and you never find out why.
Questions people ask
- What is the biggest mistake on a resume?
- Listing duties instead of results. It makes a strong candidate look like everyone else with the same title. Close behind is a layout a parser cannot read, which can hide you from searches entirely.
- Should I include references on my resume?
- No. Leave out both the references and the line "References available on request". Employers ask for references later, and the space is better used for experience.
- Is a two-page resume a mistake?
- Not if you have the experience to fill it. One page suits students and people with under about ten years of experience. Two pages is normal beyond that. See our guide on how long a resume should be.