Review

Resume mistakes worth fixing first

Not all resume mistakes are equal. A typo is embarrassing; a page of unquantified responsibilities is the reason you didn't get called. Here they are roughly in order of what they cost you.

Sofia Marchetti · Career coachUpdated 25 July 20264 min read

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The short version

Describing duties instead of results is the mistake that costs the most, and the most common.
Burying your best achievement below three routine bullets wastes the only pass most resumes get.
One resume sent to every posting reads as one written for none of them.
Filler — adjectives, references lines, objective statements — pushes real content off the page.
Typos matter least of the serious mistakes, and are still worth ten minutes.

Describing duties instead of results

The most expensive mistake, and the most common. A resume that lists what you were assigned reads as interchangeable with everyone else who held that title.

The fix is mechanical: go through each bullet and ask "what changed because I did this?" If there is no answer, either find one or cut the line.

Burying the best thing you've done

Readers scan top to bottom and give the page seconds. Your strongest evidence sitting fourth in a list under your third job will not be seen.

Reorder ruthlessly. The first bullet of your most recent role is the most valuable line on the resume — put your best there.

One resume for every application

A generic resume is optimised for no one. You do not need to rewrite it each time, but the summary and the top bullets of the most recent role should reflect the job you are applying for.

Fifteen minutes of tailoring beats an hour of formatting.

Filler that pushes real content off the page

References available on request. Objective statements. Skill bars showing you at 80% in a language. A photo where photos aren't customary. Interests that could belong to anyone.

Each of these takes space from something that would have helped, on a page where space is the binding constraint.

Inconsistency

Dates formatted three ways, a mix of past and present tense within one role, bullets that sometimes end in full stops. None of it is fatal individually; together it reads as carelessness on a document whose whole purpose is to demonstrate that you are not careless.

Read the resume once looking only at the formatting, ignoring the words. It's the fastest proofread there is.

Typos, last

Last on the list because it is the least common cause of rejection, not because it doesn't matter. Read it backwards, read it out loud, or have somebody else read it — you cannot proofread your own writing forwards after the fourth pass.

What each mistake actually costs

Scroll the table sideways to compare →

Mistake	What it costs	The fix
Duties instead of results	The reader cannot tell whether you were good at the job	Add what changed to the end of each bullet
Best work buried	It is never read — the first pass is six to ten seconds	Move it to the first bullet of your most recent role
One resume for everything	You lose to anyone who spent fifteen minutes tailoring	Keep a master and cut a version per role type
Filler and adjectives	Real content gets pushed onto a second page or off the end	Delete every claim you cannot evidence elsewhere
Inconsistency	Reads as carelessness before the reader can say why	One date format, one tense rule, one punctuation rule
Typos	Embarrassment, and a fatal impression in detail-critical roles	Read it out loud, then have someone else read it

The mistakes to check for

Open your own resume beside this and work down it. Every line is something a reader or a parser acts on within the first pass.

No bullet begins "responsible for" or "duties included"
Your strongest achievement is in the top third of the page
The page is visibly written for the posting you are sending it to
No "references available on request", no objective, no skill rating bars
No unsupported adjectives about your own character
Date formats, tense and punctuation are consistent throughout
Your own name, job titles and employers are spelled correctly
Nothing on the page is untrue, including a degree described as finished

Templates that do not create their own mistakes

Some of the errors above are the template's fault rather than yours — skill meters, photo blocks where they are not wanted, layouts that tempt you to shrink the type. These have none of them.