The Résumé Mistakes I See Most Often—and How to Fix Them

Sep 23

4 min read

Most résumés aren't bad. In fact, many of the résumés I review belong to people who have years of experience, valuable skills, and plenty to offer an employer.

The problem is that their résumé doesn't always communicate that very well.

Sometimes it's outdated. Sometimes it reads like a job description. Sometimes the formatting is doing more harm than good. And sometimes the person has simply been staring at their own career history for so long that it's difficult to recognize what actually deserves attention.

Here are some of the résumé issues I see most often—and, more importantly, what you can do about them.

1. Listing Duties Instead of Showing Value

One of the most common résumé mistakes is copying responsibilities directly from a job description.

“Answered phones.” “Maintained files.” “Assisted customers.” “Prepared reports.”

Those statements tell me what the position required, but they don't tell me much about you.

Instead, think about the scope, purpose, or result of your work. Did you manage records for a high-volume office? Support multiple attorneys or departments? Resolve customer issues? Improve an existing process? Train new employees?

You don't need a dramatic accomplishment or a percentage attached to every bullet. You simply want your résumé to show how you performed the work, not just prove that the task appeared in your job description.

2. Trying to Include Everything You've Ever Done

Your résumé is not your autobiography.

This can be especially difficult for experienced professionals. When you've spent 10, 15, or 20 years building a career, cutting anything can feel like you're erasing part of your experience.

You're not.

A résumé is a marketing document designed for a particular purpose. Older positions can often be condensed, while recent and relevant experience receives more attention. The goal isn't to document every task you've performed since your first job; it's to give an employer the information most relevant to the position you're pursuing now.

3. Using the Same Résumé for Every Application

Sending the exact same résumé to twenty employers may save time, but it can also make you less competitive.

That doesn't mean completely rewriting your résumé every time you apply. It means paying attention to what the employer is actually asking for. If a position emphasizes project management, client communication, data analysis, or a particular software platform—and you have that experience—it should be easy to find on your résumé.

Your résumé should remain truthful, but relevance matters. Tailoring is about emphasizing the parts of your real experience that best match the opportunity in front of you.

4. Making the Reader Work Too Hard

You may have excellent qualifications, but if someone has to hunt through dense paragraphs, tiny text, inconsistent dates, or an overly complicated design to find them, your résumé isn't helping you.

Good résumé formatting isn't about making the document fancy. It's about making information easy to find.

Use consistent headings, readable fonts, clear spacing, and a logical structure. Your experience should be easy to scan, and your most important qualifications shouldn't be buried somewhere near the bottom of the page.

A clean résumé isn't boring. It's functional.

5. Filling the Summary With Generic Language

“Hardworking professional seeking an opportunity to utilize my skills in a growing organization.”

It sounds professional, but it could describe almost anyone.

Your summary is valuable space. Use it to establish who you are professionally and what you bring to the table. Your field, level of experience, areas of expertise, and a few relevant strengths usually tell an employer much more than phrases like “team player,” “self-motivated,” or “results-driven.”

Those qualities are better demonstrated through the rest of your résumé than simply declared at the top.

6. Forgetting That Your Career Makes Sense to You—Not Necessarily to Everyone Else

You know how your jobs connect because you lived them.

A recruiter doesn't have that context.

Career changes, military-to-civilian transitions, promotions, contract positions, overlapping roles, and unusual job titles can all make perfect sense once they're explained. Without context, however, the reader may not immediately understand the progression.

Your résumé should help connect those dots. Sometimes that means translating industry-specific terminology, clarifying a job title, reorganizing information, or emphasizing transferable skills.

This is particularly important when you're moving into a new field. The question isn't only, “What have I done?” It's also, “How does what I've done relate to where I'm going?”

7. Writing for an ATS Instead of a Human Being

Applicant tracking systems matter, but they're sometimes treated like mysterious robots that require applicants to stuff every possible keyword into a résumé.

That's not the goal.

Relevant terminology from the job posting can help demonstrate alignment, particularly when it accurately reflects your experience. But a résumé still needs to make sense when a human reads it.

Keyword stuffing, awkward phrasing, hidden text, or trying to “beat” an ATS can leave you with a document that technically contains the right words but does a poor job of communicating your qualifications.

Write for people. Optimize for systems. You need both.

Your Résumé Should Tell the Reader Where You're Going

One of the biggest shifts I make when reviewing a résumé is looking at it from the employer's perspective.

Not simply: Is everything here accurate?

But: If I knew nothing about this person, what would this résumé tell me about them?

Would I understand what they're good at? Would I see the progression in their career? Would I know what kind of position they're prepared for next? Would the experience most relevant to my opening stand out?

A strong résumé doesn't need to tell your entire life story. It needs to tell the right part of your professional story clearly enough that someone wants to learn more.

Need a Second Set of Eyes?

Sometimes the hardest résumé to write is your own. You know every position, every responsibility, and every accomplishment, which can make it surprisingly difficult to decide what matters most.

McLamb Consulting & Support provides résumé and career support for professionals who need help turning their experience into a clear, polished document that reflects where they've been—and where they're ready to go next.

Whether you're updating an outdated résumé, changing careers, translating military experience, or starting from scratch, we'll focus on presenting your actual experience clearly and strategically rather than trying to make you sound like someone you're not.