Your resume is more than a summary of your experience—it’s your first impression and ticket to the next step in the hiring process.
The only goal of your resume is get hiring managers excited enough to book a first call.
That’s it, that’s all, which means even small mistakes can keep you from landing an interview. After reviewing thousands of senior-level product, marketing and sale resumes, here are the most common pitfalls we see and practical ways to fix them.
The Top 10 Resume Mistakes:
Word Density
Mistake: Word dense paragraphs that require reading.
Quick Fix: Hiring managers scan. Increase scan-ability but editing out filler words and getting to the point faster. Also adding lines, white space, breaks up texts increasing the scan-ability.
Writing a Job Description
Mistake: Your resume reads like a job description.
Quick Fix: Stop listing everything you do and start listing the outcomes and impact of what you’ve done.
Ugly or Old Fashioned
Mistake: The resume looks messy and sloppy. There’s overuse of different fonts and clip art.
Quick Fix: Choose a clean, minimal format and limit fonts to two (Arial, Calibri, or Helvetica work well).
Too Long
Mistake: In North America, the 10 page CV is overkill!
Quick Fix: Your resume should be a maximum of two pages for North American readers.
Making Bold Assumptions
Mistake: Assuming everyone knows what your employer does.
Quick Fix: Unless your employer is BigTech, include a brief use case company description. Help hiring managers understand the business you work for, the use case of their products and the size/scale of that business.
Key Information Gaps
Mistake: Not including a phone number or LinkedIn profile. Or using an email address that pushes every potential reply to spam so you never see the interview request.
Quick Fix: Make it easy for the hiring manager to contact you. Consider adding a Calendly link to the resume to create a more frictionless experience.
Over-indexing on the Skills Section
Mistake: A list of skills section offers little to no value (unless you are a junior level IC) as even people without those skills often list them.
Quick Fix: Kill lists of skills and use that space to focus on outcomes. If they really are a skill, it will be evident in the outcomes you present for each employer.
Too Short
Mistake: You believed an article that said all resumes should be one page.
Quick Fix: A one page resume is appropriate for a new grad or someone early in their career with only one page worth content to talk about. An accomplished professional will have more to show off, but again two pages max in North America.
Jargon Overload
Mistake: The resume is riddled with 3-letter acronyms, short forms and industry slang.
Quick Fix: Use common language everyone can understand to appeal to the broadest hiring stakeholder or Talent Acquisition persona.
Small resume changes can lead to big opportunities. Investing a few minutes to ensure your resume clearly highlights your strengths and accomplishments can have a big impact.
If you’re a senior-level leader looking to level up and require a personalized resume process—our expert team can help you craft a resume that opens doors and unlocks interviews.
See our Resume Coaching for Product Leaders and Resume Coaching for Sales Leaders