HR managers share the most outrageous resume blunders they’ve seen
When looking for a new job, it’s always important to make a good first impression and that starts with the resume, and it better be a good one because it certainly will take a lot to get noticed.
But get this - for all the hours you may put into writing your resume, a new CareerBuilder survey finds that HR managers don’t spend much time looking at them. In fact, 39% of managers saying they spend less than a minute looking at a person’s resume, while 23% spend 30 seconds.
But even though they don’t linger, applicants better be careful about being too creative, or outright fibbing, because 75% of HR managers say they’ve caught a lie on a resume. Just how bad are these lies? Well, HR managers have shared some of their more outrageous ones, and a few are downright hilarious. They include:
- A 22-year-old applicant claimed three different degrees.
- An applicant listed 40 different jobs in one year.
- An applicant thought they attached a resume to an email but instead sent their full credit application for an apartment.
- An applicant applied for a job for which they were vastly unqualified (e.g. grocery store shelf-stocker applying for a physician position).
- An applicant referred to having "as many marriages as jobs."
- An applicant listed out their extensive arrest history.
- An applicant's resume had a different font type for every sentence.
- An applicant stated at the bottom of their resume that they do not like babies or puppies.
- An applicant's resume was only one sentence.
- An applicant had the same employment dates for every job listed.
Just as bad as lying or embellishing, is making mistakes, which can cost someone a possible interview. Lots of HR managers say they've found critical mistakes on CVs, which get people noticed for all the wrong reasons. They include:
- Typos or bad grammar: 77%
- Unprofessional email address: 35%
- Resume without quantifiable results: 34%
- Resume with long paragraphs of text: 25%
- Resume is generic, not customized to company: 18%
- Resume is more than two pages: 17%
- No cover letter with resume: 10%
Source: Yahoo Finance