I spend a lot of my time recruiting people, so I go through countless resumes. Last year, I went through about 2000 resumes to hire 10 people. I thought I’d share some hints and tips on easy ways to get your resume thrown out.
5 Easy Tips to Get Your Resume Thrown Out
- Write something on your resume that is clearly a lie. Please don’t tell me you’re fluent in a language if you’re not. I LOVE to call people and start interviewing them in Spanish half-way through if they claim that they speak Spanish.
- Lots of typos. The more, the better. It makes you an easy “no”. Throw in some easy grammatical mistakes, and you are making my decision very easy.
- Applying to a job you are no match for. I like to be open minded, but if you’ve got none of the qualifications or skills I’m looking for, it makes it easy to toss your resume into the round file.
- Weird Formats. Some alternative formats are interesting, but if I can’t figure out the format, or find the info I’m looking for, then bye-bye resume.
- 3+ Page Resumes From A New College Graduate or Student. I don’t care if you’ve won the Nobel Peace prize. There is no good reason for someone applying for an entry level job to have a super long resume. I want to see Major, Graduation Date, School, Any jobs you’ve had, and any major Awards you’ve Won or Earned.
There are also some honorable mentions on my list- like listing all of your hobbies, your gender, and your health status. Hobbies are something that are good to have, but unless you’ve done something notable, then please don’t put them on the resume.
What about you? What things turn you off of a resume? What criteria do you use to weed out resumes?
