15 Red Flags To Avoid On Your Resume

Redditor u/CaptainPrower:

Women state they have military experience and list "military spouse" as their rank.

From a Redditor:

One thing I recently heard was about white space.

Large white space in your resume makes people think you lack achievements, even if your resume has much content.

Formatting matters. Spread your information evenly across the page.

From Redditor u/Psyco_diver:

I used to get people who copy and paste online resumes. They forget to check because they have blank spots or placeholders like "insert name, experience, wage, etc." If you skip double-checking, you won't succeed.

I have hired people who succeed with terrible resumes lacking format or logic, according to some professionals.

From Redditor u/OccasionallyWright:

Length kills resumes. I saw one resume, 11 pages long for a midlevel communications job. That is an automatic rejection.

From Redditor u/Pollux95630:

Resume writers see extreme laziness. People submit the same bland, cookie-cutter resume for multiple jobs. These resumes contain typos, grammar errors, and formatting problems. We post an ad, get fifty resumes. Only five or ten look competent. The rest are bad; they get rejected fast.

Custom tailor your resume for the job posting. Find keywords in their needs and place those same words in your resume if they fit. Different employers use different terms; use their language.

From Redditor u/WhenImOnDaMic:

Interests: swinging.

I am not judging people for their interests. Just consider that such things should not appear in a professional setting.

From Redditor u/boythinks:

The best resume I ever saw was for retail.

The resume was 11 pages long, printed on pink paper. She listed her priest as a reference. It had many Bible quotes and references to "the Lord." It ended with this quote: "tough situations don't last, tough people do."

I will always remember that pink resume.

From Redditor u/CorgiMonsoon:

I work as a stage manager in theater. Someone might see an impressive resume based on credits, but examining it shows they rarely work for the same company or with the same director more than once.

From Redditor u/ashrevolts:

Poor formatting, an unprofessional email address, over two pages (industry dependent), insufficient experience but many personal interests, typos, and submitting Word instead of PDF.

From Redditor u/CinderellaNot:

Spelling errors and wrong abbreviations. There was a logging company named McMillian Blodell, and she shortened it to Mac Blo.

From Redditor u/fadevelocity:

I hired computer programmers. A big red flag is lots of certifications in different languages and technologies. This suggests someone passes tests well but values creative and problem-solving aspects of programming less.

A few relevant certifications show focus and commitment to a platform or application. Scattergun certifications are just noise.

Test passers failed simple interview questions. For example, they could not write pseudo-code to check if a number between 1 and n is a factor of both five and three.

From Redditor u/lefthanded4340:

Changing jobs often, lacking valid experience, and forgetting to update the application's location from the original resume location.

From Redditor u/Rahbahkah:

I work in animation. I have only held one managerial role. This is specific to my field. People over-design their CVs with too many columns, colors, and graphics.

An illustrator or designer must know when to keep things simple. CVs need to be concise and easy to read. Do not use all the ink if you need to print the document.

From Redditor u/Charming-Mood5380:

Multiple entries of unverifiable experience appear, such as “day trader,” “crypto-investor,” or “multilevel marketing,” followed by something unrelated like “administrative assistant” for six months.

People with resumes like that usually try to cover periods of unemployment or underemployment.

From a former Redditor:

I got a resume stylized with "My Little Pony" garbage. The borders were rainbow. A pony sat in the corner. MLP language filled it. It was truly horrifying.

Later, I learned I should not have received that resume. Friends got his USB drive and pranked him by changing his resume. He failed to check it before sending it to me.

The red flag was that the real resume had many misspelled words, while the MLP version looked much better formatted.