A resume is a brief and persuasive summary of your skills and professional accomplishments. Your resume is supposed to be your ‘advert’ to the potential buyers of your services (the employers) and it is important that you ensure that it is flawless, or near flawless if you don’t believe in perfectionism. Remember, the presentation of your resume is likely to influence your potential employer, even before they get to read its contents. While there are a number of important things you should include in your resume, which are well known to almost everyone, there is also a number of things that you must avoid in your resume – and these are surprisingly unknown to many jobseekers.

1.    Typos: It might seem too obvious to state, but a surprisingly big number of resumes have more than one typo in them. Typos (in anything) are seen as a sign of carelessness, and hardly any employer is likely to be drawn to a potential employee who is careless enough to have typos on their resume, of all places.

2.    Clutter: You have to make a prudent choice on what to include and what not to include in your resume. Remember, the document is meant to be a persuasive summary of your skills. You therefore don’t need to mention every seminar or symposium you attended – unless it gives you an edge in the particular job you are applying for. The key to deciding what to include and what to leave out is relevance. For every detail you are considering, you need to ask yourself – is this element relevant to the job I am looking to apply?

3.    Too much color: When it comes to color and resumes – the adage that simplicity is genius can never be truer. Many people fret too much about the color schemes to use for their resume, and some end up using too much color, which can be choking and repulsive. But experience has shown that as far as resumes go, you can never go wrong with the traditional black and white.