5 Common Mistakes Made in Resume Writing

There are many reasons why people generally find it tasking to get job
offers or invitations for interviews. One of such reasons is the fact
that they make unforgivable mistakes when writing their resumes. Resumes
are extremely important documents that should be written with the
utmost detail and attention to avoid mistakes.

Jumia Travel shares 5 common mistakes made in resume writing.

Ignoring Keywords
We’re in the information
and technology age, as a result, nowadays most resumes are reviewed
electronically before they are seen by human eyes. It is, therefore,
important to pay attention to keywords when writing your resume. For a
good number of organizations or HR consultancy firms, the first round of
culling resumes happens through keyword spotting with a hiring
software, and if certain keywords are missing from your resume, it is
unlikely to make it past the first round. Be sure to use keywords
related to the industry you are interested in when writing your resume;
use keywords in your job description; be sure to use keywords repeatedly
from time to time (but try not to overdo it); and basically just ensure
you include exact keywords in your resume and recognize their place in
your industry.

Being Too Lengthy
If you’re an
average working class professional with less than half a decade of
experience, it’s only appropriate for you to condense your resume down
to a page or two pages at most.  When writing your resume, regardless of
your years of experience or professional level, ensure you use words
diligently and avoid being unnecessarily verbose. No hiring manager has
the time to sift through ‘ramblings’ in your resume to get to the vital
information needed to get you past the screening phase. As a result, you
need to pay attention to your words and use them responsibly when
writing your resume. Additionally, you can ask a family, friend or close
contact with some experience in the area of resume writing to help
review your resume and advise you on the parts that need to cut out,
rephrased or paraphrased.

Being Vague or Unclear
When
hiring managers review you resume, one of the most important things
that they are concerned with are your quantitative tasks and
accomplishments. It can be detrimental to you to be vague about these
when writing your resume. Even when putting descriptions about your
former positions, you need to be specific with the details of what you
accomplished in these positions. Try to put descriptions in your resume
in terms of what you have accomplished, rather than simply listing
titles and describing everyday tasks.

Typographical and Grammatical Errors
This
should be avoided at all cost because it makes the applicant seem
careless and irresponsible, or worse, ignorant about correct grammatical
terms and structuring. It sets a precedent for employers or hiring
managers to draw very unflattering conclusions about your attitude and
verbal, writing and grammatical skills. Your resume, therefore, needs to
be grammatically perfect; and one way to achieve this is to go over it
multiple times after writing it to correct errors. You can also give it
to a friend, family or close contact with relevant experience to go over
it and help correct errors.

Cutting the Meat Out of Your Resume
The
fact that you resume shouldn’t be too wordy, doesn’t mean it should be
lacking relevant information. Be wise about the way you write your
resume, and avoid cutting things short unnecessarily because you are
trying to conform by all means to the one page standard. Just try as
much as possible to give concise summaries of important information, but
please don’t leave out important information because you are ‘trying to
avoid being too wordy’.