Sunday Scaries: The most common mistakes I see in resumes

I started a side hustle of job search coaching a few months ago (www.heymitch.com.au) and have been making notes on the areas of improvement needed for each person I’ve worked with.

Now with a sample size of 30 people + the resumes and interviews I’ve been doing in my day job for 15 year, these are the most common mistakes I see. Usually when I point them out the response is “of course, how did I not see this”.

The reason these mistakes are made is usually due to one reason:

They write their resume for themselves

When you sit down and write your resume, you need to try and forget all of the context you have as the person reading it is a stranger.

People aren’t providing enough context quickly enough, with maybe the most common example being the company you work for.

If you work for a global or nationally recognised brand, you may not need to do this.

But for most people when you list the company you work for and then go straight into experience, the person reading this could be guessing what type of company you work for or you’re hoping they’re going to go off and google for more information.

Let’s say you work for a company called TayTay industries.

Most people’s resume looks like this:

Head of Talent - TayTay industries - January 2020 - present

As the Head of talent I over see all hiring…. etc

What it should look like is something like this:

Head of Talent - TayTay industries - January 2020 - present

TayTay industries is a specialist music curation platform, bringing the best in local and global artists to one place to amplify their audience reach.
As the Head of talent I over see all hiring…

The reader now better understands the company & industry and that’s one one sentence, you could go much further like the size of the company, the clients etc

But then that’s not the only reason.

We are all dynamic, collaborative fast learners

The introduction or summary or profile that some people call it is so often under utilised and I think a lot of you would laugh if I showed you yours against 100 others. You may actually struggle to pick yours out of a 100 they are all so similar.

Here’s what the common profile summary looks like if it was based on my experience:

A seasoned professional who thrives in fast paced environments, I have 15 years experience in both Agency and Internal functions. With a strong focus on collaboration, I’m a team player that strives to achieve and exceed personal and team goals.

It can sometimes be impressive how long these introductions are without a single specific clue on what the actual f*** you do or are about or want to do.

Here’s (IMO) what they should look like:

I’m here to make hiring quicker, cheaper and less painful. Whilst I’ve held Manager, Head and Director titles, I’ve never stopped being hands on so I can be a one man band that Manages myself or teams. I’ve recruited a lot of different types of roles within Startups, Tech and Agencies so I’m a specialist generalist, if that oxymoron makes sense.

And this next part is rare:

I am specifically interested in your company after hearing your CEO Beyonce speak about her dedication to environmental sustainability, something that I’m equally passionate about.

I’m not saying it has to be about the CEO or specifically hearing them on a podcast, but if you can quickly point them to the reason why you’re wanting/more suitable for this role than the next resume, do it. Do it early. Do it quickly.

You’re not specific enough

Another contender for most common mistake, so often I get the current version of someones resume and their experience section is something like:

Managed Marketing campaigns in collaboration with cross functional teams.

What it looks like after a couple of questions:

As the only Marketer at the company, I led the strategy, budget and execution of our Marketing campaigns across Paid Social (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok), email (Hubspot) and SEO. Oversaw annual budget of $1m AUD and increased the ROI of that spend by 67% on previous year.

So when you see a 21 year old that has never had a job, been responsible for shortlisting resume or used an ATS on TikTok tell you that your resume needs to be ATS compliant, this is as close as it gets to that being true.

Keywords will help in some ATS where the company uses a matching feature to bring the top applicants to top of queues, usually only where they have hundreds or thousands of applicants.

I’m still yet to speak to anyone in Talent Acquisition (i.e. the people often reviewing your resume) that uses any sort of auto reject feature in an ATS except for things like applications outside of the country.

So when you see that sort of rhetoric or advice, ask that person which ATS they use and where they have done this themselves. Usually their response is “oh I just know” but you know what they also “just know”?

They also “just know” that the illuminati is lead by a Lizard that controls all of the media.

Communicate important information concisely, that’s the only advice you need.