Really Stupid Resume Mistakes – And How to Fix Them

If you have sent your resume to over a dozen schools and colleges, and not received a single reply, your disappointment is very natural. But this doesn’t mean that you have to give up on your teaching career. Maybe, just maybe, the problem lies in your resume. Here are the 5 most common mistakes people make in their resumes.

Typos

“Looking for a position in you college”
Did you notice the missing ‘r’? This applicant lost their candidature even before the HR team could go through their resume. This embarrassing little mistake instantly made them unfit for the position of a teacher in a respected college.
How to fix it: Give your resume to at least two other people to read. This way you’ll get other people’s opinions too.

Generic resume

Don’t use the same resume for different industries (for example, teaching and software development). Your resume should reflect the essence of the industry you’re applying for.
How to fix it: Create different resumes for different industries. And this doesn’t mean tweaking it a bit here and there. You need to create two completely different resumes.

Mass mailing

Do you send one email to several organizations using the BCC feature? Many people do it and it saves a lot of time. Problem is, if you mass mail your resume, they will think you’re not serious about their school or college, and you’re not specifically targeting them.
How to fix it: Send each resume individually. Yes, it will take a couple of minutes extra but it will be worth the time.

Not using keywords

In the era of electronic processing, many companies process the resumes digitally and weed out the generic ones. They look for certain keywords and if they don’t find any of them, your resume goes to trash even before the HR team can take a look at it.
How to fix it: Enter the relevant keywords in your resume. You can find them in the job description. Just by scanning the description carefully, you’ll notice certain important words. Use them in your resume.

Long resumes

Don’t include all your achievements in your resume. You might be tempted to mention all your accomplishments there – from the gold medal you won in college for debate to the ‘employee of the year’ award in retail. But with the large volume of resumes received by the HR, they don’t have time to go through all those details. A resume needs to be specific and compact.
How to fix it: Removed all the “junk” from your resume and make it to-the-point. Make sure it stays less than two pages long.

Until next time,

Talk to each other, support each other, take care of each other.’

Marjan

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