10 Mistakes That Will Get Your Resume Rejected

Are you wondering 'why is my resume not getting shortlisted'? Because once is a chance, twice is bad luck, but the third time is worrisome. We all know that fate is not at play if your resume/ CV is continuously acting up to get you a call for befitting job titles. The real reason is most likely that your resume isn't up to the mark. A poorly structured resume, for example, is destined to miss a target shortlist and, reach the trash can. Following are the ways in which you may go wrong with your professional resume.

1. Allergic to criticism

No one except you sees your resume/ CV before you. And you do not seem to believe in criticizing whatever you write. But the recruiter does not seem to like your resume and, hence, trashes it within 5 seconds. He/she may find it to be ordinary or even irrelevant. Other job applications who actually got a shortlist had their resumes well-polished having input from multiple associates.

2. Filling in too much

You may choose to explain the whole of your career in your amazing resume which is 6 pages long. But the hiring manager spends only about 6 seconds on average to make a decision. This puts your CV in the out-tray when the in-tray is piled up with 1 or 2-page resumes mentioning over 20 years of experience. Owners of such resumes do not write details of older jobs, irrelevant hobbies, or information like residence address, etc. So the next time you wonder- 'why is my resume not getting shortlisted?', assess if you are overloading it with information.

3. Holding onto past

You have a single aim with which you shoot every time there comes a target job. You have a single resume ready and it takes you just a click to send your old resume. This way, you try to target various jobs in just an hour. But your shots will miss all the targets because the selected candidate was the sniper who took hours to line up his target by reading the job description, learning about the company and role, and then customizing his resume to prune, reword and highlight what was important to the employer.

4. I, Me, & Myself

The resume tells about you. That is why you use personal pronouns such as ‘I’, ‘me’, 'we', etc. in your resume. This becomes the reason for your resume standing out in the recruiter's hands, but for not-so-right intentions. Experienced people who write resumes regularly, know that it is not advisable to use any personal pronoun in the subject or object of a sentence. Instead, they present information in bullet points in an active voice, for e.g. ‘Managed a team of 5 engineers.  Making this common mistake might lead you to wonder- 'why is my resume not getting shortlisted?'.

Also read: Resume Prep with top Recruiters & Industry Experts

5. Lies get caught

You may exaggerate in your document and use partial facts. You may even put someone else’s achievements. However, most of the time, the recruiter will catch your lie using his/her existing knowledge and further access to the internet. When you do get a shortlist or the job itself, this situation becomes worse as such a discovery would lead to termination, black-listing, and/or permanent damage to your reputation.

6. It isn’t a Bollywood audition

You would be interested to put your passport-sized photograph on your resume. You may even decorate it to build an artistic resume. Well, it is all much favored if it is a movie audition or for a designer’s role. For any other purpose, the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) would reject your resume as it will find it unreadable. After which, the recruiter also overlooks it for standard & professional resumes without any pictures and designs.

7. Tons of subjective skills 

The job description is calling people with diligence and professionalism. Following this, you throw these words into the mix of your resume. No one denies, in fact, agrees, that you are hardworking and smart. Yet your resume is not likely to be on the recruiter’s desk. This is because the recruiter is searching for hard/ technical skills such as ‘python’ and ‘tally’ and not subjective attributes of ‘hard work’ and ‘diligence’.

8. Being proud

One must always take pride in the responsibilities being taken in your previous roles. But it does not mean that you put all of it on your resume. The recruiter would wonder why you have written a job description and not a resume. So, he/she dumps it. On the other hand, the smart resume writer has mentioned his personal achievements in the document and not the duties, roles, & responsibilities, therefore, making the CV more relatable and more comparable.

9. The simple error

In an unlikely scenario, you have never heard of ‘spell check’& ‘grammar check’. So, your resume contains some extra digits or wrong dates, or even incorrect contact details. So, you do not check what has been drafted. However, the recruiter does not seem to understand why your phone number is unreachable. With these errors and typos, he/she would assume that the job is not that important to you.

10. Non-quantification

Words are your friends and, hence, your resume becomes all poetry but no quant. This makes the recruiter unable to interpret the meaning of ‘smartest salesperson’. So, he/she decides to not waste an interview for you. Given this, the shortlist does include your friend who had put in the numbers and a benchmark: achieved INR 1.2 Cr sales - 20% above target, 2nd highest in a team of 10, etc.

Keeping the above in mind, follow the simple steps to go back to your resume and find out if it is the reason that you are not getting shortlisted for your dream job. You can also use an online resume builder, check out a resume sample, one-page resume templates, or professional resume templates to make an awesome resume. Also, putting a convincing cover letter on your resume makes it even more attractive and increases your chance of getting hired. For making a cover letter, you may find a cover letter maker or you should look out for cover letter templates.

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