When it comes time to submit a resume, you have to make sure this is as perfect as you can possibly make it. Before your job interview, before your first handshake, before anything comes out of your mouth, your resume is your first point of contact with a potential employer, and is the first impression you will make. You have to make it count, and one of the best ways to do that is to avoid these resume pitfalls that can make a bad impression and even prevent that important, face-to-face interview.

Typos & Grammar Errors

In some ways, this particular point shouldn’t even require mentioning, it should absolutely be a given that if a potential employer looks at your resume and sees it has typing mistakes, grammar errors, or even out right factual mistakes on things like phone numbers or contact details, it’s going to go on the reject pile. Anyone that is either so apathetic about their first impression, or so prone to not seeing mistakes that they let these errors slip through even when they are diligently scanning for mistakes is saying all the wrong things about themselves.

Current Work Contact Information

You do not want your employers or other people at work receiving phone calls asking about you and scheduling a job interview. Nor do you want emails with the company address on them trying to ask about the same thing. This tells an employer that you have no tact, discretion or respect for your current employer, which may be a transferable trait to them.

Your Photo

Other parts of the world such as Asia, do have professional conventions for including photographs with resumes, but in the United States, at least, who you are is more about what you’ve done rather than how you look. Electrical construction and engineering in particular doesn’t care so much about your headshot as it does about your qualifications. So, while including a photo may someday become a professional requirement in other careers, today, in this field, it still isn’t.

Incorrect Or Complex Formatting

Don’t get fancy with your typefaces, spacing or other elements of your resume layout. A resume is supposed to do just one thing; deliver information about your qualifications to an employer as quickly and easily as possible. Anything that gets in the way of this objective is getting in the way of your being hired. Don’t turn your resume’s format into an expression of your personality, that’s not what it’s there for.

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