The jobs market is highly competitive, with dozens of candidates applying for a single vacancy a regular occurrence, so any prospective jobseekers will need to make their résumé stand tall above the rest. Employers will have mountains of applications to filter and often make up their mind within 60 seconds, so unless an applicant wows them from the get-go, they will simply move on to the next candidate. Indeed, around 20% of résumés aren’t even read fully, as an employer has already decided that the applicant is not suitable for the vacancy. With that in mind, jobseekers would be well advised to ensure that their résumé is utterly flawless, but time and again, recruiters come across the same elementary mistakes and hollow buzzwords.
This infographic from Australian company Ayers highlights the most common résumé errors that instantly repulse employers, such as simple grammatical mistakes, brightly-colored fonts and an overly casual tone. It also documents the empty, meaningless clichés that are constantly thrown onto résumés through sheer laziness. Don’t just say that you can work independently, that you can work well under pressure or that you’re a good communicator. Have something to back it up. It’s the easiest thing in the world to make a grandiose statement. It’s a lot harder to provide hard evidence to give substance to that statement.
If you’re swimming upstream in trying to write the perfect résumé, check out this infographic for some really well-informed tips, and hopefully it’ll set you on the path to future gainful employment!
Author’s Bio: Colin Cuthbert is the Marketing Manager of Ayers, a payroll and contractor management solutions company in Australia.
