Your resume reflects you. It should be able to reflect everything- your character, skills, achievements, experience, and qualification.
Mention all those things that you think a reader must know. Like:
Who are you?
How do you fit for the job?
What are your accomplishments?
How will you help employer in achieving organizational goals?
Here is a LIST OF MOST COMMON RESUME COMMON MISTAKES:
1.ACCOMPLISHMENTS:
Include your duties but don’t forget to include your accomplishments. In this competitive world everything is accomplishment driven. The person recruiting you wants to be sure that you will prove to be an asset for his firm.
•Mention all your achievements that helped you to walk differently from crowd.
•List all those things that you did to stand apart.
•Mention how you were an asset for your company.
•What were the challenges faced by your organization and how you help to overcome them.
•What results company received by implementing your ideas.
•What all you did to earn business for your company?
•How did you actually help your organization in saving time and money?
•How was your relationship with your clients?
•What were your strategies for expanding business with your high net worth clients?
2.NO PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Try and provide only relevant information about yourself. You should not include your age, sex, color, race, marital status, height, weight, date of birth etc. Even hobbies should be included only when they are directly related to work area. Use the space you have kept for personal details to mention some more of your qualities.
3.REFERENCES:
Never mention references directly on your resume. You can list them on a separate sheet of paper and should give only when specifically asked by the employer.
Even you should avoid using phrases like: Reference available on request.
4.PRESENTATION:
Try to make your resume as friendly as possible. Your resume reflects your personal characteristics. It should be properly structured and written. Use bullets than paragraphs to describe each section in your resume. Generally an employer gives 20-30 second to a particular resume. And you should make sure that he reads what you want him to read. Bullets help in going through important points quickly and easily.
Don’t make grammatical mistakes. They will leave a bad impression on employer. Read again and again to find any error between the lines. Write short sentences about your qualities and achievements. Avoid using too many different kinds of fonts.
You should always show your resume to few people before sending it out. It helps in knowing how much visually attractive your resume is.
A resume is a formal document and therefore use of personal nouns and pronouns should be restricted.
Always use good quality paper and printer for printing your resume.
5.RESUME WHEN SENT VIA A E-MAIL:
The appearance of a resume sometimes becomes distorted when sent as an attachment through e – mail. Or it may not open in the same format on other persons computes as it opens in your computer. Sometimes the number of pages may increase, or the alignment may change. To avoid all these risk you should e-mail your resume to someone known and check if the formatting appears to be same.
6.LIST ITEMS IN ORDER OF INTEREST:
A resume shall always have information arranged in order of importance to the employer.
If you were studying before applying for the job or belong to a field such as science where education remains higher than job experience mention your qualifications first. But work experience is mentioned before than education if you have one. Whichever of the two will help you more in selling yourself shall be mentioned first.
In resumes education or experience are mentioned in reverse sequence. It is assumed that your recent degree or work experience will be more useful for the employer.
Thus to sum up remember not to mention anything in your resume that can go against you. For example:
Age discrimination is still present and so you should avoid all ways and means that can reflect your age. Employers may assume that you are too young or mature to handle the job. Or may reject you with a fear that you may take there position one day.