3 Resume Mistakes That are Killing Your Job Search

Is your Resume good enough to get you a job in 6 seconds?

That's right, recruiters spend only about 6 seconds before making a fit/no fit decision and moving you forward in the application process.

That’s a very, very short time to catch a recruiter’s eye unless you have fancy names like Harvard, McKinsey, or Google on your Resume.

You don’t need a degree from Harvard or work at Google to land your dream job. But you do need to avoid these three common mistakes and give the recruiter a reason to spend more than 6 seconds on your Resume!

Three Resume Mistakes that are Killing Your Job Search

1. Putting Your Location on the Resume

As a Career and Job Search coach, this is the #1 Resume mistake I see for candidates, especially those who are seeking roles in a different city or a different country (for example: when immigrating from India to Canada on PR).

If you are looking for a job in a different city or country, do not mention your current location on your Resume or LinkedIn. If you are not automatically filtered out by the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) based on location, the hiring team will likely screen you out assuming lack of required work authorization or friction with relocation.

Stick to only an email address as your contact information as most interviews are now held virtually over Zoom. Unless you have a foreign phone number where you can take calls, it is best to skip adding your phone number to the Resume as well.

2. Not Rewording Your Job Title

Switching up my job title to industry-acceptable titles has been the #1 factor in landing me senior and executive-level interviews with Fortune 500 companies.

Let me say this again: rewording your job title for LinkedIn or Resume isn’t a crime! But it’s one of the biggest mental block my clients often have.

“But Richa, my current title is Delivery Manager. Wouldn’t I be lying if I use Program Manager?”

The simple answer is “No”. Because depending on the size, industry, and culture of the team, your title may be Program Manager, Delivery Manager, Operations Manager, Engagement Manager, Director of Strategy, PMO Lead, Engineering Manager, or Technical Product Manager.

Switch up your job title to exactly what the job description is looking for, and make it easier for the recruiter to find you from the pile of 200 resumes. Your hired self will thank you.

3. Not Using Industry-Specific Terms

To understand why it is necessary to use industry-specific terms in your Resume, it is important to understand how recruiter incentives work.

Recruiting agencies are often paid commission on a per-candidate basis. So for every candidate they place, they will get compensated 15-25% of the base salary. Corporate recruiters often have fixed targets to close a certain number of requisitions or deliver a certain number of hires.

In either case, it is in the recruiter’s best interest to hire a qualified candidate ASAP. For a candidate, the easiest way to demonstrate that they are qualified is to use Industry-specific words on their Resume. This can be as nuanced as using “customers” vs “clients”, “OKR vs KPI” or “people-management vs stakeholder-management”.

My recommendation is to go through 15-20 job descriptions for each industry that you want to target. Then create 3-4 variations of your Resume, each incorporating several industry-specific keywords to establish your domain knowledge quickly. Further hyper tailor these Resumes for each role type you are applying for and start seeing a higher ROI on your job search efforts.

If you liked today’s newsletter, you are going to love my upcoming Job Search Masterclass on 22 January at 2 pm EST.

I will teach the exact strategies I used to land interviews with Google, Meta, DoorDash, Shopify, Instacart, and Amazon and land a $200k+ job without applying to 100s of online applications.

We have 192 participants already in this LIVE masterclass with only a handful of seats left before we max out. Save your spot here: Job Search Masterclass