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10 Common Mistakes on Resumes

If you are proofreading or editing your own resume, I highly recommend that you wait until at least 24 hours after writing it. That gap gives you a chance to approach your resume with a fresh eye. Then you should look particularly for these common mistakes:

  1. Inconsistent use or wrong use of punctuation (for example, inconsistent use of the comma before “and” in a series; missing periods; or misused semicolons)
  2. Wrong, incomplete, or difficult to read contact information (especially check your phone number and email address)
  3. Misspelled company or location names (look them up on the internet to make sure your memory is correct)
  4. Inconsistent dates of unemployment (for example, your current and previous full-time jobs both are dated “2011-Present”)
  5. Formatting that changes from the first page to the second (for example, the right alignment changes from justified to ragged right; or you bold your job titles on page 1 but not on page 2)
  6. Misspellings that are not caught by or are even created by your electronic spell checker (for example, “fiancé” instead of “finance”)
  7. Extra spaces between words or sentences, especially listed items like skills (the standard is one space after a period, not two)
  8. Excessive capitalization, especially of common nouns (your spell checker or grammar checker may be responsible for this)
  9. Fonts that are easy to read on your screen but not on paper—or vice versa (be especially careful of how colored fonts will show up if the resume is printed in black and white)
  10. Verbs that are not consistent with nouns (for example, “the members of the Board is…”) or that are in the present tense, even though the job described is in the distant past.

Proofreading is an extremely important part of preparing your resume, for mistakes in the resume will automatically disqualify you in the minds of hiring managers and recruiters. They want employees who will be attentive to detail when it counts most.

Therefore, you should never rely just on electronic spelling and grammar checkers, but make sure your resume is proofread by someone who knows grammar and spelling. If you must DIY, and you aren’t confident of your skills, then please consult online dictionary and grammar resources.

Better yet, trust your resume from start to finish to Robin’s Resumes®. We are here to help.

Proofreading Your Resume: Seven Problem Areas

Online spell checkers and grammar checkers have very real limitations. Even if you used an online system to spell check and grammar check your resume, you should still proofread it yourself. The following seven items tell you why. Spell checkers and grammar checkers are unable to tell if:

  1. The correct word is being used. Many times a word is wrong for your resume but is still spelled correctly (disparate and desperate, finance and fiancé, manager and manger). You are the only one who can tell which word was meant.
  2. The correct verb goes with each noun. For example, the correct verb is for Kohls is singular: “Kohls is.” Grammar checkers are particularly bad in figuring out the right verb for compound nouns or compound sentences.
  3. Numbers are consistent. You should settle on one standard: 3M or 3 million; the 90s or the 1990s; USD 4 billion or US $4 billion; 0.50 or .50 or .5. Many grammar and spell checkers will accept both versions, so you must check for consistency.
  4. Lists are consistent. For example, the following list is inconsistent: “Worked on increasing revenue, decreasing overhead and morale.” It seems to say the job applicant worked on decreasing morale—not a good quality in a leader.
  5. Punctuation is used correctly and consistently. It doesn’t matter if you use the comma before “and” in a series, but you have to use it (or not use it) consistently and correctly. You should avoid exclamation points. In most cases, the period at the end of a sentence goes inside quotation marks. These are all decisions that an online grammar checker cannot make for you; you must proofread.
  6. Acronyms are correct. Does the acronym match up with the beginning letters of the full name (e.g., using the acronym USF for US Air Force)?
  7. Spacing and alignment are consistent. You don’t want to justify page 1 and use a ragged right margin on page 2; you want the spaces between bullets to be consistent, and you want the same font(s) to be used throughout for headings and text.

I do not advise reading a resume backwards as a proofreading tool. The main reason is that you are highly unlikely to find any of the above six problems if you are reading backwards. You cannot tell whether “are” or “is” is the correct verb or if the word you want is ensure, insure, or assure.

However, I do advocate printing the resume out and reading each line with a ruler beneath it; reading the resume out loud at least once (it is amazing what your eye misses but your ear will “hear” as wrong); and putting the resume away for at least 24 hours before you proofread.

One of our goals at Robin’s Resumes® is to make sure that every resume goes out letter, word, and comma-perfect. Contact us today.

 

Three Preventable Mistakes on Resumes

Resume clients often give me a copy of an outdated resume to serve as a starting point for creating a new, more powerful resume targeted to their current job search. Lately, some preventable writing and proofreading mistakes have been cropping up in those old resumes crop over and over again.

For example, Marine Corps has appeared in more than one resume without the “s” in Corps. The word “corp.” is an abbreviation for “corporation” and the word “corpse” refers to a dead body but the word “corps” refers to a military organization. It is the word you need in a sentence like the following:

Worked closely with the Marine Corps and the Army Corps of Engineers.

A second mistake that appears frequently is putting a period after “LLC” in a company name. You need a period in the abbreviation for corporation (ABC Corp.) and in the abbreviation for incorporated (ABC Inc.) but not for LLC (ABC LLC). By the way, if an abbreviation occurs at the end of a sentence, the same period serves for both the end of the abbreviation and the end of the sentence. You don’t need two periods. The following punctuation is correct:

Promoted to lead HR in 2005 after improving morale at ABC Inc. Was assigned to head HR at ABC Inc. and Foghorn LLC as part of a joint venture.

A third preventable writing mistake involves the word “including.” The correct punctuation is a comma before and no punctuation after the word—but more and more I’m seeing a semi-colon before “including” and a colon after. A colon after “including” is appropriate before a bullet list but generally not in a sentence. The correct punctuation in a sentence is:

Led all marketing efforts, including print, customer-facing, social media, and billboard.

At Robin’s Resumes™, we specifically look for common and uncommon mistakes when writing and proofreading your resume. We approach every resume with a fresh eye so that it represents you in the most professional manner. Contact us today.

 

Proofreading Resumes on Paper

I have often ranted about the complete uselessness of electronic grammar checkers and mentioned the need for manual proofreading, rather than relying on electronic spellcheckers, but I am also against proofreading a resume on the computer instead of printing it out. Here are my top five reasons for advocating manual proofreading, with paper in your hand:

  1. No matter how carefully you look, onscreen you are going to miss the tiny details like a double period at the end of a sentence or a word that is partially bolded and partially unbolded. With a hard copy, you can proofread the resume looking for those details in particular.
  2. If you have a two-page (or longer) resume, it is very hard to keep the pages consistent if you only view them onscreen. You might write dates as 2001-2008 on page 1 but 2001 to 2008 on page 2 or you might have justification on one page and ragged right margins on the other. A hard copy makes cross-checking easy.
  3. When you are proofreading on a computer you automatically add missing words, especially two-letter prepositions, even though they are not there. When you proof word-by-word on a hard copy—or better yet, read it out loud—you catch those missing words.
  4. The computer hides flaws, such as a change in font (for example, there is very little difference onscreen between Arial and Tahoma) or problems with line spacing or word spacing. Because even layout views are not exact online, the computer masks problems that only become apparent when you print the resume.
  5. Formats that look great on the computer may not print well. But if you are selected for an interview, your interviewer will be looking at a paper copy of your resume, not at the computer screen. Your resume needs to print easily and look professional in hard copy.

An added benefit of a paper resume is that you can hand it to an objective party and ask them to read it just as a hiring manager would read it during an interview. If any statement is unclear or confusing, you can correct it before the resume goes out.

Robin’s Resumes® is dedicated to creating professional resumes that help give job applicants the edge, both in content and format.

Secrets of a Professional Resume Writer

With 12 years of resume writing experience behind me, I have acquired quite a few little tips and techniques that come automatically to me but might be unfamiliar to those who are writing or rewriting their resume for the first time.

For example,

On finding accomplishments: Any industry awards you received, any business you brought in, any committees you chaired, and any dollars you saved the company are clear accomplishments. But so are the awards you were nominated for, the growth your company underwent while you were there, the committees you were a member of, and the efficiencies you brought to your own job. Accomplishments in volunteer positions are also important.

On finding good keywords: Your best guide as to what a company is looking for is the company itself. Look at the advertisements, job postings, and websites for the company or others in the same industry. List the words they are using over and over again, and make sure those words appear naturally in your resume.

On proofreading: Forget that adage about proofreading by reading the text backwards. You will not only lose concentration out of sheer boredom, you will never find errors in grammar. Always proofread from first word to last at least twice: once on paper and once online. When you proofread online, set the zoom level over 100%. That way you will be sure to see missing or extra periods or other problems that might be hard to spot.

On using resources: No one knows everything, especially not online spelling and grammar checkers. A physical dictionary and grammar reference are still handy; there are also some online sites run by colleges that answer grammar questions. I once had a client argue with me about her misuse of the word “compliment” in a sentence; it should have been “complement.” But she was absolutely sure the word “compliment” was fine because the spell checker agreed with her. Your instincts and the spell checker’s instincts might agree, but take the time to check a dictionary.

And when you need expert advice on your resume, please turn to Robin’s Resumes®.

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