We Read 400 Resumes a Week. These 7 Mistakes Are Everywhere.

A resume's job is brutally simple: earn a conversation. Yet most resumes we see are written as career diaries instead of arguments for an interview. Here are the seven mistakes our screeners flag most — and the fix for each.

1. Responsibilities instead of results

"Responsible for managing the sales team" tells us what your job description said. "Grew regional revenue 34% while cutting team attrition to 8%" tells us what you did with it. Every line should answer: what changed because you were there?

2. No numbers anywhere

Team size, budget, revenue, latency, error rates, retention — quantify whatever your role touched. Numbers are the difference between a claim and evidence. If you genuinely can't share a figure, use scale words: 'a nine-state distribution network', 'a 40-engineer platform org'.

3. One resume for every job

You don't need ten resumes — you need one master document and ten minutes of tailoring: reorder your top bullets so the most relevant achievements appear first, and mirror the role's actual vocabulary where it's honest to do so.

4. The skills graveyard

A skills section listing 30 technologies signals nothing except that you can type. List the eight you'd be happy to be interviewed on tomorrow. Depth beats breadth in every screen we run.

5. Unexplained gaps

Gaps are normal — layoffs, caregiving, health, study. Unexplained gaps invite worse assumptions than the truth. One honest line ('Career break for eldercare, 2024') closes the question completely.

6. Two pages of ancient history

Your first job from 2012 deserves one line, not five bullets. Weight your detail toward the last five to seven years — that's what you're being hired on.

7. Burying the headline

Screeners form a hypothesis in the first ten seconds. A tight three-line summary at the top — who you are, your superpower, what you're looking for — sets the frame for everything below it. Write it last, make it specific, cut every adjective that isn't earning its place.