Video transcript:
Some of the common mistakes that job applicants make during the process is let’s talk with the résumé, or talk about the résumé. The résumé is your marketing tool, and it’s only piece of information a lot of times that an employer has to go on as to try to figure out who you are, what you have done, and where you have done it. So if your résumé is not transparent in terms of being accurate and representing all the jobs that you have had, it may end up being a problem at some point during the process. Or if there is something on your résumé that doesn’t just make sense at some point during the interview process, that’s going to come up.
Another area where there are a lot of common mistakes are typos, inconsistent formatting, different font sizes, different spacing. So from a visual standpoint, it looks a little sloppy. Maybe somebody doesn’t say anything about it, but it’s quite possible that if an employer looks at this and decides, well, we really need to hire but let’s give this person a chance, but in the back of their mind they may be thinking is this person going to be sloppy in their work product as well, especially if it might require some written form of communication with clients internally, policies and procedures, etc. So people need to be aware that they put their best foot forward with the version of the résumé that they present, which leads to another idea behind the version of the résumé.
If the version of your résumé states an objective, or somewhere in the summary at the top of the résumé along the lines of what you are seeking or where you have been, and you are seeking a job that is a little different or a lot different, and it doesn’t really show easily how your skills are transferable or to be recognized for the job you’re applying for, the person receiving the résumé or being asked to review it may look at it and totally bypass you altogether, and you may not have a chance to even be considered for that job when you potentially could be a fit, and they might be able to relax on some of the requirements because they see that you have the majority of them.
I’m personally not a big fan of objectives. I try to tell people to put a summary and have a few sentences that indicate what they are looking for, or not so much what they are looking for, where they have been, what they have done, and where they have done it, and possibly what they are looking for depending on if it’s a very clear pathway. If it’s not, I would suggest they be a little bit more open-ended and just state the facts of where they have been and what type of work they have been doing and what they think their best skills are.
