Like lifeguards protecting their organization's waters, recruiters look for reasons to blow the whistle and tell job seekers to get out of the candidate pool. According to the results of a survey by Accountemps, careless students often oblige. In fact, slightly more than one-third of executives surveyed recently cited typos or grammatical errors as the most common mistakes on resumes.
The national poll includes responses from 150 senior executives—including those from human resources, finance, and marketing departments—with the nation's 1,000 largest companies. Executives were asked, "In your opinion, which of the following is the single most common mistake job seekers make on their resumes?" Their responses:
- Typos or grammatical errors—34 percent
- Including too much information—22 percent
- Not listing achievements in former roles—17 percent
- Poor layout and/or design—17 percent
- Including too little information—7 percent
- Other/don't know—3 percent