10 Resume Mistakes That Are Costing You Interviews
With Fixed Examples

Your resume is your passport to the interview. But most candidates make mistakes that eliminate them before a recruiter ever sees their application.

Here are the 10 most common mistakes we see, with concrete examples of the wrong version and the corrected version.

Mistake 1: Listing Responsibilities Instead of Results

This is the most widespread and costliest mistake.

What doesn't work:

"Responsible for managing a team of 5 people"

What works:

"Led a team of 5 developers, delivering 3 projects ahead of schedule and reducing bugs by 40%"

Why? Recruiters want proof of performance, not a job description. Every line on your resume should answer: "So what? What was the impact?"

Golden rule: Use the formula Action + Context + Measurable Result.

Mistake 2: Overly Complex Design

Resumes with multiple columns, skill charts, icons, and bright colors are visually appealing. But they're invisible to ATS systems.

What doesn't work:

• Two columns with skill progress bars
• Icons for phone, email, location
• Pie charts for language proficiency

What works:

• Single column, clean and spacious
• Plain text for contact information
• Text-based skill list with proficiency in words

Why? ATS reads left to right, line by line. Columns create garbled text: "Experience | Skills | Developer | Python | 5 years | Expert".

Mistake 3: An Objective Instead of a Professional Summary

What doesn't work:

"Seeking a challenging position in a dynamic company where I can leverage my skills"

What works:

"Full-Stack Developer with 5 years of experience in React and Node.js, specializing in fintech applications. Contributed to a 30% increase in user traffic at [Company]."

Why? The objective talks about what you want. The professional summary shows what you bring. The recruiter is asking: "What can this person do for us?"

Mistake 4: Not Tailoring the Resume to Each Job

Sending the same resume everywhere is the surest method to never receive a response.

What doesn't work:

A generic resume sent to 50 different companies.

What works:

For each application:

1. Read the job posting carefully
2. Identify 5-10 important keywords
3. Integrate these keywords naturally into your resume
4. Reorganize your experiences to highlight the most relevant ones

Why? The recruiter searches by keyword inside their tool, and reads fast. A resume that doesn't use the posting's terms won't surface in those searches and won't read as an answer to their need — even when the experience is there.

Tip: AI matching tools like Brevy automatically analyze job postings and show you which ones match your profile.

Mistake 5: Too Long or Too Short

Length guidelines:

What doesn't work:

• A junior with a 3-page resume filled with internships and school projects
• A senior with 20 years compressed onto one page

What works:

• Focus on the last 5-7 years of experience
• Older experiences: one line with title and company is enough
• Remove anything not relevant to the target position

Mistake 6: Contact Information in Header/Footer

This is a classic trap from design templates.

What doesn't work:

Your name, email, and phone placed in the document header or footer.

What works:

All contact details in the main body of the document, at the top of the first page.

Why? Most ATS completely ignore headers and footers. Your contact information becomes literally invisible.

Mistake 7: Unexplained Gaps in Your Timeline

A gap of 6 months or more in your chronology is a red flag for recruiters.

What doesn't work:

Ignoring the gap and hoping nobody notices.

What works:

• Parental leave: Mention it simply and positively
• Career change: Show the training or personal projects
• Health/Personal: "Professional break" followed by what you've done since
• Freelancing: List it as a full experience entry

Mistake 8: No Technical Skills Section

What doesn't work:

Mentioning skills only within experience descriptions.

What works:

A dedicated "Skills" section with:

• Technical skills: Python, React, SQL, AWS, etc.
• Tools: Jira, Figma, Git, Slack
• Languages: English (native), French (fluent), Spanish (intermediate)

Why? ATS and recruiters scan this section first. It's your compatibility checklist.

Mistake 9: Using Non-Standard Section Headers

What doesn't work:

• "My Journey" instead of "Professional Experience"
• "What I Can Do" instead of "Skills"
• "My Education" instead of "Education"

What works:

Use standard terms that ATS systems recognize:

• Professional Experience (or Work Experience)
• Education
• Skills
• Languages
• Certifications

Mistake 10: Sending a PDF Created with a Design Tool

What doesn't work:

A resume created in Canva, InDesign, or Photoshop then exported as PDF. These tools generate image-based PDFs, not text.

What works:

A PDF generated from structured text data. Tools like Brevy, Word, or LaTeX produce PDFs with properly encoded, ATS-readable text.

Quick test: Open your PDF and try to select text. If you can't select each word individually, your resume is probably an image.

Checklist Before Sending Your Resume

• [ ] Measurable results (not just responsibilities)
• [ ] Simple single-column format
• [ ] Professional summary (not an objective)
• [ ] Job posting keywords integrated
• [ ] Length appropriate for your experience
• [ ] Contact info in the document body
• [ ] Career gaps explained
• [ ] Dedicated technical skills section
• [ ] Standard section headers
• [ ] PDF with selectable text

FAQ

What's the most common resume mistake?

Describing duties instead of results. "Managed the team budget" says what you were handed; "Owned a EUR 120k budget, cut 15% in a year" says what you did with it. The second is verifiable, memorable, and answers the question the recruiter is actually asking.

Should contact details go in the document header?

No, put them in the body. Many parsing tools ignore a file's header and footer regions: your name, email and phone can then vanish from the record built out of your resume. It's a mistake that's invisible to the eye and expensive.

Is a two-column resume a problem?

For sending straight to a human, no. For an application form, yes: the tool reads the file top to bottom, and two columns come out interleaved. The resume isn't rejected for it — it just lands damaged in the database and surfaces poorly in searches. Keep to one column whenever a form is involved.

How do I explain a gap in my resume?

Name it briefly rather than hiding it: parental leave, a career change, study, health, job searching. An unexplained stretch raises more questions than one owned in a single line. If you did something during it — training, a project, volunteering — treat it as a proper entry.

Should I put numbers on my resume?

Yes wherever you can, because a number is evidence rather than a claim. Budget, volume, timeline, team size, percentage change: anything measurable anchors your contribution. Where you have no number, replace it with a concrete outcome rather than an adjective.

Conclusion

These 10 mistakes eliminate more candidates than lack of experience. The good news? They're all easy to fix.

An optimized resume doesn't guarantee a job. But a poorly optimized one guarantees you won't get one.

Create an ATS-optimized resume in minutes with Brevy