- Ethan Evans says résumés often fail by listing activities instead of showcasing impactful results.
- Recruiters skim résumés quickly, so clarity and conciseness are crucial for success.
- You must also list your education and certifications correctly and include your interests.
I’ve reviewed over 10,000+ résumés and conducted more than 2,500 interviews in my career as a VP at multiple companies, including Amazon.
I ran recruiting at three startups, and now I coach individuals through their job searches. I know what recruiters and hiring managers want in a résumé — and what mistakes could cost you the job.
The problem and the goal
I often see six mistakes. The first three are the most damaging, and 90% of résumés contain at least one of them.
Recruiters and managers are under tremendous pressure and usually review résumés as quickly as possible. Your résumé has to be optimized to catch their eye quickly. The goal is for them to skim it and think it would be worthwhile to interview you.
Here are the three biggest mistakes that could cost you the job you apply for.
1. No results, only activities
This is the most common mistake I see on résumés. People write down what they did by saying “wrote code,” “managed employees,” or “worked on X project.”
Senior performers, however, know they’re valued for their impact and make a point to show the results of their work.
You can rewrite nearly every bullet on your résumé in a way that describes why your work matters and shows that your presence made a positive difference to the team, the product, and the bottom line.
Here are some tricks to help do this:
- If possible, link to your results. People exaggerate and lie on résumés, but nothing says “my work is real” like a link to the project.
- The human eye is automatically drawn to bold. Selectively bold a few words or phrases to ensure your strongest accomplishments are noticed.
- Use action verbs like ‘owned,’ ‘built,’ ‘drove,’ or ‘delivered.’ This suggests you actively did something rather than simply witness it.
- People believe specific numbers, including dollar figures. Use them when possible.
2. No objective
Without an objective, a recruiter or hiring manager has to guess if you want the job. If you’re a recruiter with a pile of résumés, you’re not going to waste your time doing any guessing.
An objective clearly states what kind of role you’re looking for in your next job, and a great objective is formulaic and short enough to be read in a single glance. Don’t just talk about yourself in subjective terms.
An example of the formula for a senior engineer role would be, “Seeking a role as a Sr. Engineer where I can apply my proven ability shipping scaled services to deliver valuable innovation for the business.“
The first part simply states the role you seek. This is particularly important if you want to do something different from your last job.
The second part allows you to state your highest qualifications for a role. Highlight the top reason to put your résumé in the “call” pile.
The third part shows you’re there to help the manager and the company. While you’re looking for a “good job” for yourself, the manager is not focused on “giving someone a good job.” You want to convey that you’re not just interested in yourself but that you’re also dedicated to providing value to your new manager.
Here’s my own objective in my executive coaching résumé as an example:
Objective: Provide professional development at scale, guiding transitions to executive leadership.
Proven executive leadership of multiple $500M+ businesses across games, video, apps, and music. Global leadership experience of teams 800+. Technical inventor; 60+ issued patents.
3. Too many words
Many résumés are long, lasting three or more pages or using a tiny font to cram the page.
The mistake is writing what we want to write about rather than what the reader needs to know. I call these “happy words.” They occur when a résumé opens with the candidate writing positive sentences about who they think they are. It looks like this:
“Motivated self-starter looking for a positive environment where I can bring my technical skills and passion to a worthy project. Great coworker and mentor. Adaptable, fast learner.”
It’s natural to want to share what we see as our most positive traits. Unfortunately, managers looking at dozens of résumés daily will ignore this because it doesn’t tell what the candidate can do.
The rule to follow is “show, don’t tell.” If you’re a fast learner, include bullets on your résumé that show this. For example: “Learned and applied X to project Y, going from first effort to customer shipment in nine weeks.”
The goal of your résumé is to put your three best accomplishments per role in front of the manager. If you write too much, they will skim over your biggest accomplishments. It is best to keep your résumé under 1,000 words.
My résumé is 700 words long and covers a 30-year career, and I created it on Microsoft Word in two hours.
Once you’ve written a solid résumé, look out for these three more mistakes before applying to any job.
4. Optimizing for the Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
Many résumés try to cram keywords at the top to pass through the applicant tracking system. There are two significant problems with this approach.
Over 80% of all jobs go to someone with a networking connection to the role. Focusing on getting through the ATS means you’re focusing on jobs where you have no networking connection, and therefore, you’re competing against everyone else.
The second problem is that this makes the résumé hard for a human to read, and it buries your strongest accomplishments in the body of the text.
The ideal approach is to write your résumé for human eyes, then leverage your network to get it into the hands of someone who will read it. If you want to include keywords, put them at the end of your résumé in a ‘skills’ section.
5. Listing education and certifications in the wrong place
If you’re a new graduate, the expected résumé format is to list your education at the top. If you have work experience, your education should be below your work history.
Another element of your education section is your GPA. If you do not list your GPA, the reader will assume it is poor. You’re better off listing it if you did well (above a 3.3).
While you can safely remove your GPA once you’re 10 years out of school, if you graduated with honors, it may be worth keeping forever.
The bottom of your résumé is the place to list most certifications unless you have a critical attribute like security clearance or an expected certification for the role you seek. You can put those near the top.
6. Excluding hobbies and interests
There are two benefits to ending your résumé with a little information about hobbies, charitable activities, and interests.
These interests humanize you. If someone has read to the bottom of your résumé, you won their attention. Giving a little personal texture at the bottom helps you be memorable.
Second, managers and recruiters look for icebreakers if they call you. Maybe they ski or have a dog, too, so listing things like this creates more chances to connect emotionally.
Next steps
Once you’re confident in your résumé, don’t procrastinate by continuing to polish it. Focus on networking to get a good reference for a job.
One last mistake I see is candidates failing to leverage their carefully crafted résumé language on LinkedIn. To get the most out of LinkedIn, put your crisp objective statement in the “About” section of the profile. Then, copy your job bullets into each section of “Work History.”
Fill out your education and other information, and keep it current. This way, recruiters can find you while you sleep.
Ethan Evans is a retired Amazon vice president with over 23 years of experience as a business executive.
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