Common Resume Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
6 min read
Recruiters who read hundreds of resumes a week tend to report the same complaints, regardless of industry: vague descriptions, no evidence of results, and formatting that is harder to scan than it needs to be. None of these require starting over. Most come down to rewriting individual bullet points and tightening the layout.
Listing duties instead of results
The single most common weakness is a bullet point that describes what the job involved rather than what you accomplished in it.
“Responsible for managing social media accounts.”
“Grew Instagram following from 2,000 to 11,000 in eight months through a weekly content calendar.”
A useful test: could this bullet apply to literally anyone who held the job title? If yes, rewrite it with a number, an outcome, or a specific project name.
A wall of text with no hierarchy
Recruiters typically spend seconds on an initial scan. Long paragraphs, inconsistent spacing, or no clear separation between sections forces them to work harder than they are willing to for a first pass. Short bullet points, consistent spacing, and a clear heading structure let someone find your most relevant experience without reading every word.
Burying the most relevant experience
Resumes are read in roughly reverse-chronological order, and readers pay the most attention near the top of the page. If your most relevant experience is three jobs back, or listed last within a role's bullets, it may never get read. Reorder bullet points within each job so the most relevant achievement for the role you want comes first.
Typos and inconsistent formatting
Small errors carry disproportionate weight on a resume because there is so little text to judge someone by. Read it backward, line by line, or have someone else read it — your brain tends to autocorrect your own errors while reading forward.
Avoid
- Mixing "Jan 2023" and "01/2023" in the same resume
- Switching bullet styles or spacing between sections
Do instead
- Pick one date format and use it everywhere
- Keep bullet style and spacing identical across every section
One resume for every job
Sending the exact same resume to every posting is convenient but weak. It does not need to be a rewrite each time — adjusting your summary, reordering bullets, and matching a few keywords takes a few minutes and meaningfully improves both ATS matching and how relevant the resume feels to the reader.