Updating a resume is one of those tedious parts of finding a new job. Unless you have done it a lot, it can be hard to even quantify your literal life experience into a few bullet points. So it never hurts to seek out some help. Or, if you want to feel better about yourself, take a peek at what not to do.Someone asked, “Employers, what can someone put on a resume that sends it straight to the shredder?” and netizens shared all the questionable choices they have encountered. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorite examples, and be sure to comment your own thoughts below.This post may includeaffiliate links.
Updating a resume is one of those tedious parts of finding a new job. Unless you have done it a lot, it can be hard to even quantify your literal life experience into a few bullet points. So it never hurts to seek out some help. Or, if you want to feel better about yourself, take a peek at what not to do.
Someone asked, “Employers, what can someone put on a resume that sends it straight to the shredder?” and netizens shared all the questionable choices they have encountered. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorite examples, and be sure to comment your own thoughts below.
This post may includeaffiliate links.
Food service experience applying for entry level call centre job put as her daily duties “wept and moped at the end of every shift”. I’m not gonna lie, I hired her and she was fine. I worked food service and was like where’s the lie?
I received a resume last week that had notes on it “insert relevant skills here” and “maybe change font” “fill this space with buzz words” this was on his LinkedIn profile as well. If you can’t pay attention to the resume you send out I can’t trust you’ll pay attention to anything else.
The word résumé itselfcomes from French(hence the strange pronunciation) and means “to summarize.” Which is a pretty good way to describe turning your entire life into a one-page description. There is some, possibly apocryphal, evidence that it was none other than Leonardo Da Vinci whowrote the first onein order to secure employment. It’s somewhat sad that a literal genius still had to go through the same process as the rest of us.These days, the vast majority of résumés are still a page or two of words, but the age of the internet is slowly switching things up. Now one can findvideo résumésthat folks upload to YouTube, for example, or even send out as TikTok. While it perhaps stands out a bit, scrolling through a video to find one particular aspect of a candidate seems more annoying than useful.
The word résumé itselfcomes from French(hence the strange pronunciation) and means “to summarize.” Which is a pretty good way to describe turning your entire life into a one-page description. There is some, possibly apocryphal, evidence that it was none other than Leonardo Da Vinci whowrote the first onein order to secure employment. It’s somewhat sad that a literal genius still had to go through the same process as the rest of us.
These days, the vast majority of résumés are still a page or two of words, but the age of the internet is slowly switching things up. Now one can findvideo résumésthat folks upload to YouTube, for example, or even send out as TikTok. While it perhaps stands out a bit, scrolling through a video to find one particular aspect of a candidate seems more annoying than useful.
I once got a resume with the worst formatting and grammar. It was clear the person was a non-native English speaker. I don’t usually do this, but I recreated her resume, re-organized it and corrected grammar/spelling mistakes and sent it back to her. I hope she got a job. She wasn’t a good fit based on her resume, otherwise I would have given her the benefit of the doubt and at least interviewed her.
Military spouse (with rank no less)
Nudes. Like, any picture of yourself is probably going to get the resume thrown out because of potential lawsuits, but hearing that shriek of “DEAR GOD WHY” from the hotel manager’s desk while they were going through resumes was hilarious.Like, bro, your butt was not that nice. Why did you attach it.
The amount of halfwits that put Brexit voter on their CVs is just weird. Straight in the bin.
I didn’t make it past the name line on someone’s resume one time.We were hiring a CFO and Googling their name revealed an SEC complaint for a 9 figure fraud. At the time, there wasn’t a verdict on the books, but I wasn’t gonna wait for one. See you never.
“Time Person of the Year 2006”
I once received a resume in the mail that had no telephone number, address or email. He called a few days later to ask why he hadn’t received any reply. I asked him to get a copy of his resume so we could review it together. I asked him to tell me the address we might have replied to; then the telephone number and finally the email.After a long pause, he said, “Aww, f**k!” and hung up.
This guy put a tinder bio at the head of his resume. All his likes and dislikes, with a headshot of him holding an axe while looking sweaty.I do IT work…
I used to work for a bar, a girl came in with an application saying she was 22 but then listeded she’d graduated high school that year. I fired off a few questions then slipped in what’s your birthday. She was barely 17.
When I was in high school I worked in a shoe store at the mall. We got a resume once for a sales job that had, under the “Other Interests” section, “Special relationship with the one they call Satan.” Yes, really.I wanted to interview her, just to see what she’d actually say in person. My manager vetoed that, sadly.
His mother handed it to me with him just quietly standing beside her, looking like this wasn’t his idea.
Had a dude turn in his application with black marker lines redacting all of his info. Only things left were his name, a phone number, and a note saying “We can discuss these details during my interview.“He, in fact, did not get an interview.
Had a guy put on his resume that he invented the dollar, owned Microsoft and Google and Ford, was an astronaut, and founded New Zealand.This was when I managed an Aldi store and he was applying as an associate. But he was clear to say on his resume that our business model could be vastly improved with his expertise.I almost brought him in for an interview just for fun, but I couldn’t really find the time along with the real applicants.
Like a lot of companies nowadays we do blind applications, no mention of age, gender, name, where you studied etc. allowed on the part that goes to people doing the evaluation.We also attract a lot of applicants from prestigious universities, some of whom really feel the need to find a way to mention the name of the institution in their competency answers as though it will help more than actually demonstrating that you are a good candidate for the job. Technically I could throw your application away, I usually won’t unless you’re especially obnoxious about it but it definitely does not help….oh but one person did add “MENSA IQ” to their application in response to a question that had no relation to such information and that did get rapidly dropped because that’s a huge ‘I’m going to be insufferable to work with’ red flag.EDIT oh and the personal statement that began with ‘as a large language model…’ didn’t get very far.
One resume I got while managing a head shop included how much he could bench and the characters he played in high school theater. He was in his late mid twenties.
Make sure you attach the right file. I once had somebody attach his court summons for a DUI charge. Instant deny.
I once got a resume written in crayon.
I once put that I ruled France from 1693-1702 with an iron fist, invented the letter G, was a world class Candyland player, and was a unicorn rancher in my cover letter.The job was an IT position at an advertising company that went on and on about how creative everyone that works there is. After I listed my above accomplishments, I said, “OK. So maybe I haven’t done all of those things listed above but I have (list of boring IT c**p).“I got an email the next day from HR saying that was the best cover letter they had ever gotten and they’d hire me without even interviewing me based on it but they were a Mac business and all my experience was on Windows.
Height, weight, marital status, religion
They didn’t list a single job. Their only experience was several years of jiu jitsu.
I’m sure a lot of us have made mistakes on our CVs. I once changed my email address but forgot to change .co.uk to .com and the interviewer asked me about it at the end of an interview for a job I did not get.The worst I’ve seen is from a girl named Clairfe. What an interesting name, is it Irish? My colleague showed me the application form handed in alongside the CV, where CLAIRE had managed to spell her own name right.
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- Their photo. I don’t need a picture of you, I’m hiring for an office job not a modeling or acting gig.* Text speak. Don’t write “looking 4 a good career” or something. Use spellcheck/grammar check.* Fake jobs or schools like “school of hard knocks” or “hustle industries, CEO” (I’ve seen both of these)
Student at the school of Life
When I worked at a hotel, applicants would cut in front of customers, or not care that i was on the phone, to ask for an application.At least 90% also asked for a pen.I’d always give them a pen, and not expect them to give it back (cheap hotel- branded ballponts), although it aggravated me that so many were unprepared. But if they were rude, I’d put a note on the application. Last thing any of us needed to deal with was complaints about rude employees.They’d never get a call back if I made such a note. Just something for people to consider when they want to apply somewhere, especially when it’s a customer service job. Be thoughtful and respectful to whomever may be your future coworker.
The phrase “attention to detail” makes me look for any type of mistake 10x more than I normally would. Because more often than not, there is some mistake which immediately contradicts the attention to detail.Pro-tip: leave that phrase out, it never helps and can only make you look silly
Relevant Experience: Leader of a raid guild in the popular MMO World of Warcraft. I am responsible for coordinating the efforts of 25 individuals working toward a common goal, demonstrating leadership and problem solving skills.
I had someone who started off on their cover letter with “Let me introduce myself…” and “I’m very excited to get to know your company.” Yet…we’d just fired him a couple of weeks ago from a management position and he was applying for a different newly posted job.
I’ve never thrown out a resume for something egregious but I will never forget my interview with an underdog candidate where when I asked him what got him interested in that particular role (a corporate IT gig) he shrugged his shoulders and said “I don’t know… it’s a job.” In the words of Tyra Banks, “I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you!!”
Not a resume but occasionally someone will cold-message me on LinkedIn, and whenever I can I’ll reply if it’s a student looking for guidance in my filed and take a call and talk them through some s**t they should know. Anyhow, one of those messages began “Dear Mr [name], I hope this message finds you in the pink of your health. I’m still not fully over that.
Now this is going to come as a surprise to some, but your list of “diagnoses” and your previous work “trauma” might be a bit of a “red flag” to the company you are applying to.
I’m not an employer but my youngest sister wanted me to check over her first resume and she had put“5’3Brown hairBrown eyesFunny, charismatic, loves to cook”I sat there laughing to myself pretty good and then let her know this isn’t a dating profile.
Had an application for a management position at a public library. Job listing specified that an MLIS (Master’s in Library and Information Science) degree is required. Got an application from one person who was attending community college, earing an Associate’s degree in music. Their only “Management” experience was running a K-Pop fan club.Another person spelled the library’s name incorrectly.
Lawyer here. Multiple pages kill me. Academia can be different, but in practice, nothing you need a second page to say is worth the time.
I’ve seen hundreds of CVs that are still templates with [insert job title here] still on them
Work Experience: Moderator on Reddit
I know some people think they’re pretty slick but when I look through resumes I hate the overused “business jargon”. Nothing turns me off more then a solid page of word salad that could be summed up in 2-3 sentences. It gives off a minimum word count essay vibe.
Unformatted resumé. Block of text. Opening statement as folows:“I want job.“To be fair, this was a job placement/school facility for those looking to grow their English skills and ability. The issue with this fella was that he refused help in building an appropriate North American resumé.It’s difficult to send a resumé like that to clients, many of whom were/are international, and requiring a certain command of the English language.
Grammatical and/or spelling issues are a major red flag.
On more than one occasion, I got a resume (from the same person) for an entry-level position. The first time I got it, the resume (entry level position) was 5 pages long and a laundry list of every job the dude has ever held from high school forward.What will forever stand out to me is his entry for when he worked at JC Penney. He put the job description as “helping customers find stuff”. Yes that’s technically the job, but “assisting customers with locating merchandise” sounds so much better on a resume.
I interview programmers. I disregard those resumes that are like 75% just lists of technologies the person has used. I want to see what you did to solve a business need, not that you used AWS EC2 and AWS S3 and AWS RDS and AWS Lambda and AWS ELBs and AWS VPCs and AWS SQS and AWS Macie and AWS Cloudformation and Hashicorp Terraform and NodeJS and NPM and JavaScript and TypeScript and on and on and on, especially because in my experience, nine out of ten times, if you choose a random technology from the list and ask them what exactly they did with it, it ends up being something like “I evaluated it for the project and could learn it if required.”
“Loves Hentai”
Someone spelled their name wrong.Mentioned wanting to make a career at xyz company- person applied to abc company.
Applying for an entry level job at a small business and your desired salary is more than the owner even makes
Filling every gap between traditional corporate jobs with spurious claims to have been “consulting”.
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Greta Jaruševičiūtė
Aivaras Kaziukonis
Gabija Saveiskyte
Work & Money
