A resume is nothing more than an overview of the pertinent points of your life presented in a comprehensive manner to a potential employer. Writing a good resume isn’t really difficult but there are a few pitfalls that are easy to avoid.

 

Probably the most common mistakes on resumes are simply typographical errors. It may seem like a waste of time to go back over your resume and to ask someone else to read over it before you submit it, but that could very well be the point in which you find a typo that could have been a real turn off for your potential employer. Even if the job you are applying for has nothing to do with your writing ability, typing skill or knowledge of the English language, the fact that your resume contains typographical errors signifies that you were lax in this first step toward seeking employment.

 

You should also be careful about the wording on your resume. While it might seem more professional to say that you were a “navigational technician” when you were really driving a delivery truck, it also sounds a bit pretentious. You can bet your potential employer is going to ask you what a “customer relations specialist” does at a fast food chain and you’re going to sound a bit silly when you have to explain that you took orders. You may very well have just killed your chances at the job.

 

Honesty is always the best policy, even if it means that you don’t get the job. If you do obtain employment under false pretenses and it’s later discovered, you could face termination and even legal action.

 

Remember to keep it short. Even if your background is impressive, find a way to condense the information to no more than a couple of pages. You can easily add attachments that contain more details about particular aspects of your background that are pertinent to the job you are seeking, but employers aren’t generally going to plow through five or six pages of employment and educational history. If you can’t impress them in two pages, you probably can’t impress them in five.

 

Finally, use one of the wizards found on many computer programs to create your resume. These have the formatting built in so that you’re not left wondering about the correct style.