8 Resume Red Flags You Need to Avoid

As Will Rogers said, “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The first impression your employer has of you is your resume, and first impressions have never been so important. This is because your resume must make a favorable first impression at least three times in the modern hiring process.

The first time is when your resume is submitted to the applicant tracking system (ATS) software. To be effectively read by the software, your resume needs to conform to certain conventions. If it doesn’t, you risk being disqualified from the search before a human even has a chance to read your resume.

The second time is when a junior human resources officer or recruiter reviews your resume. Recent eye-tracking research suggests that this review may only last an average of six seconds and consists of a fit/no fit decision. These individuals are looking to confirm that you meet the position’s requirements.

The third time your resume is reviewed will most likely be your future boss or their delegate. This is where the hard work of creating an informative and concise resume really pays off. These individuals are going to carefully examine your previous job experience to try and discern if you will be a good fit for the position and worth inviting in for an interview.

So, today more than ever before, it’s important to create an effective resume to get you to your ultimate goal, an interview. To get you started, below are nine of the top resume red flags, along with tips on how to overcome red flags on your resume.

1. Job Hopping

For business tycoon, Kevin O’Leary, the most critical red flag is if the candidate held multiple positions over the past two years. “I simply put it into the garbage, because we’re not going to look at that person.” The reason for this is simple, hiring and training new employees is expensive. If an employer is going to take a risk on a new employee, there needs to be some assurance that the employee is going to stick around for a while.

Sometimes there are reasons for jumping from job to job that you can’t avoid. To minimize the impact on your resume, here are a few tips:

2. Typos and Grammatical Errors

The easiest of the resume red flags to avoid is also one of the most important. Make sure that your resume has no typos, grammatical errors, or inconsistent formatting. Double-check your work by asking your friends and family to review your document and make suggestions for improvement.

In addition to making sure that your resume is tidy and there are no spelling or punctuation problems, ensure that your resume is written in the first-person inferred tense. That is, write your sentences in first-person, but omit the pronoun “I.” So, instead of writing, “I planned and implemented projects,” you write, “planned and implemented projects.”

3. Lack of Clear Formatting

The results of the eye-tracking research introduced above show that clearly defined resume sections are key. With only six seconds to work with, you need to make sure that the main job requirements can be easily found. Below are a few formatting tips to help you remove resume red flags associated with formatting.

4. Unprofessional Email Address

Ditch the childhood email or the one associated with your current position. Having a name-based professional email address is a must during a job search to remove resume red flags. The one exception is if you are a current or just graduated college student.  A recent study found that email addresses that end in “edu” are more favorable than personal email addresses.

5. Employment Gaps

Significant gaps in employment are a red flag for employers because they fear it’s a sign you are not pursuing a long-term career or that employers are finding fault with you in some way. To smooth out your employment gaps, try the techniques listed above under “job hopping.”

If the gap is too long to minimize, include a brief explanation in the chronology. In addition to explaining the gap, list any relevant professional, volunteer, or training activities undertaken during your break. This will show potential employers that your skills are up-to-date and that you are committed to your career despite whatever caused the break.

6. Not Customized to Position

An overly generic resume is also on the list of resume red flags. To make it through the screening process, it’s important to carefully target your resume for the position. Make sure that you illustrate clearly and on the first page of your resume that you meet the job requirements using language that mirrors the job ad. In addition to the resume title, keywords that occur frequently in the job ad should also appear in your resume. One easy way to do this is to add a skills list at the beginning of your document.

7. Non-Traditional Format

Sometimes, when an individual doesn’t have a lot of work experience, they opt to write their resume in a different format, for example, a functional resume format that focuses more on their skills than job duties. However, the software and humans screening your resume do not like this format. That’s because this format makes it difficult to tie skills to positions and therefore years of experience.

If you are lacking work experience, there are a couple of techniques to showcase your skills in a traditional format. One way is to introduce your experience in the career overview and skills list. Another way is to add your non-traditional experience to your professional chronology. For example, add relevant volunteer experience or school projects as if they were paying positions. This will allow you the flexibility to fully illustrate your relevant skill set.

8. Unsupported or Exaggerated Self-Descriptive Statements

There is little room in a resume for hyperbole or adjectives. You may indeed be “amazing,” however, if you can’t back up your claim with examples, it is a big red flag for employers. At best, you may be seen as over-confident, at worse, untrustworthy. Try not to add anything to your resume that you cannot back up with a specific example of how you applied or where you learned the skill or the situation in which you were able to accomplish the goal.

How to Avoid Red Flags on Resumes

If you are looking for a surefire way to avoid resume red flags, consider having your resume professionally rewritten. In the eye-tracking study, researchers found that professionally rewritten resumes were found 60% more usable and 40% clearer than before the rewrite. One clear choice for a remote resume rewrite is Virtual Vocations. Our Career Services include resume rewrites, cover letters, and LinkedIn profile creation, as well as individual and group career counseling services. With only 6 seconds to capture the attention of a recruiter, this modest investment in your career is guaranteed to pay off.

What strategies do you use to fix the potential flaws in your resume? Connect with Virtual Vocations on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube to tell us about the telecommute job you want. We’d love to hear from you and learn more about which remote jobs you hope to see in our next Employer Alert blog post!