6 common mistakes to avoid in your resume

These days I am asked to review a few resumes per week, all of them for technical candidates. It is astounding how many people will write things on their resumes that make it hard to support a “let’s interview” recommendation.

Some of these things are mild irritants that prevent the reader from focusing on the important bits of the resume; some are serious ‘red flags’ that practically disqualify the candidate. Many of these annoyances keep coming up again and again. Here are six common ones:

• Distracting the reader with irrelevant personal information, such as a photography, marital status, nationality or age. This information can subtly bias the reader, so it is always wise to leave it out unless explicitly asked for (note that in many countries it is illegal for a potential employer to ask about things such as age and marital status, unless they can prove that this data is directly related to your ability to do your job).
• Lumping together heterogeneous terms in a skill list. For example: "Programming languages: C, C++, HTML, Java".
• Focusing on irrelevant details in a description of a previous project. For example: "Developed e-commerce site. Technologies used: Eclipse, [...]".
• Using all possible hype words that you can come up with. For example: "Developed e-commerce site making extensive use of Design Patterns and UML, leveraging modern AJAX technology for Web 2.0 community building while making extensive use of open-source agile bazaar-style software engineering methods."
• Using all the wrong keywords in a role description. For example: "Cool Company Inc. Position: Senior Engineer. Accomplishments: Organized meetings, coordinated conferences, drafted documentation, did sales presentation for end customers."
• Claiming "extensive experience" in some area, and not providing any evidence that this is indeed the case. For example: "Experienced Java programmer with detailed JVM knowledge. [And then resume lists 3 previous jobs where the work was done in C++.]"