5 Common Resume Mistakes

I remember graduating from school, putting together a resume, and constantly wondering if my resume was "good." It can be so hard to know what makes a resume good, but after reading hundreds of data science resumes, I wanted to point out 5 mistakes I see all the time. If you can avoid these mistakes, you will have made great progress in getting your resume to be great.

So - here are 5 common resume mistakes:

1. Using a non-standard resume template

I've found that it is increasingly common for people to try to make their resume different. Things like skill charts or personal touches, while they look cool, are often distracting. Business Insider did a comparison of 2 resume formats and tracked recruiters' eye movements. Here are the results:

The resume on the right, with a more standard and clear format, was more thoroughly observed. Recruiters have to analyze hundreds of resumes. You want your resume to feel as familiar as possible so recruiters can find the information they are looking for quickly and efficiently.

2. Adding too much fluff 

When I graduated, I had minimal experience, and I remember feeling like I had to do everything I could to make my resume feel "full." I guess my hope was I would somehow look more experienced if my resume was denser. I now realize that was a mistake.

Again - recruiters and hiring managers don't have a lot of time. They don't want to read about unrelated jobs or maybe less inspiring job experience. You should make sure your resume focuses as clearly as possible on what you are most proud of - what you think makes you the perfect fit for your job.

Too often, I finish reading resumes and nothing unique really stood out to me. Make sure you remove the fluff from your resume so that even when read very quickly it is evident to a hiring manager what makes you a fantastic fit for the role. In my opinion, this means you should never have a resume that is longer than 1 page. Even with decades of experience, I think people can summarize what really needs to be known in a single page.

3. Listing Skills When You Shouldn't

I get it - you took a class and did some C++ for a project. The job mentioned C++ as a beneficial skill to have, so why not add it to your resume? Why not add all the programming languages you have ever programmed "Hello World" in?

While often not that extreme, be careful making a laundry list of technical skills for which you have a very basic knowledge. Anything listed on your resume is free game for questions and it looks pretty bad when your C++ knowledge turns out to be limited to a few lines of code. So, try to be honest with yourself and only add skills for which you feel decently proficient. This isn't to say you have to be an expert in everything you list, but you should be comfortable fielding interview questions related to your skills.

4. Not Making Room for Non-Standard Experience

Sometimes when interviewing candidates experiences come out that are super relevant, but were not on their resume. Usually, this is because the experience didn't fit well into previous work experience or education.

For example, maybe a side-project or open-source contributions. Make sure you make room for the experiences you feel have prepared you to be a great fit for the job. As mentioned in point 2, remove the fluff, and make room for these non-standard experiences you have. They will hopefully make you stand out among all the other resumes.

5. Relying Too Much on School Projects

School projects are awesome and can help you learn a ton. Unfortunately, they tend to pretty boiler-plate and the real downside is that many other people have done them as well. If you have a bunch of school projects listed on your resume that you know many other people have done as well, it's likely recruiters have seen them before, and basically just glaze over them when reading your resume.

6. Bonus: A Basically Empty GitHub

A strong GitHub account is an amazing thing to list on your resume. I love looking at candidates' GitHub profiles because I can instantly see examples of code and projects they have worked on. I strongly recommend people find time to have a few projects on GitHub they are proud of - it can go a long way to help you stand out.

That being said, listing a basically empty GitHub account isn't a great idea. If you have one push for your one school project, that actually isn't very much code, and might not be code you're proud of, maybe skip putting your GitHub on your resume. If you're GitHub is empty, definitely skip it (you would be surprised how often I see this).

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