5 English Resume Mistakes to Avoid

Writing English resumes is difficult for everyone. Knowing what to include, how to present yourself, and how to format your resume can feel overwhelming. Making a small mistake can cause a recruiter or hiring manager to discard your resume and disqualify you from the job instantly. In this post, we discuss five common mistakes to avoid on English resumes.

These are mistakes that we often see working with our clients. Some of these are pretty easy to correct, but others will take some time and thinking to improve. Our website has many free resources to help you improve your English resume writing and avoid these and other mistakes.

The first mistake to avoid on your English resume is being sloppy. Having a sloppy resume is the easiest way for recruiters to disqualify your resume. Your resume should be neat, professional, and be styled correctly.

We constantly receive applications from applicants who do not properly style their resumes. Major mistakes we see include:

• Inconsistent use of capital letters, punctuation marks, and dating
• Sloppy use of text by having inconsistent styles, sizes, or spacing in between lines
• Too many different colors and styles
• Inconsistent dates showing when you worked at certain workplaces (March 2021-April 2022, 03/2021-04/2022, etc.)

Your resume reflects your professionalism and your work ethic. If you submit a sloppy or poorly formatted resume, it will appear as if you are a sloppy or careless employee.

It is crucial that you avoid sloppiness and inconsistencies when writing your resume. Simply ask friends or professionals to view your resume and point out any inconsistencies or problems with your resume.

Another common mistake when writing English resumes is making them too long. Your resume is probably too long!

We often receive resumes from recent university graduates or junior employees that are 2 or 3 pages long (sometimes longer).  This is entirely unnecessary, and this is not typically how to write English resumes.

When drafting a resume, especially when English is not your first language, it’s tempting to include as much information as possible to showcase your qualifications. However, one of the key things to avoid on an English resume is making it excessively long. Recruiters often skim through resumes due to time constraints, and a concise resume ensures your strongest points get noticed. 

Your resume should be limited to one page. Yes, one page! The only exception is if you have 10+ years of relevant work experience. If you have anything less than 10 years of experience, keep your resume on one page. By keeping your resume to one or two pages you will be forced to present only your most relevant experiences, you show your familiarity with English-language work norms, and it makes it much easier for recruiters and automated systems to assess.

You have probably heard that recruiters spend less than 10 seconds scanning a resume. Do not give them reason to disqualify you because it is too long, contains irrelevant information, or does not follow the norms of English resumes. Thus, one of the most crucial things to avoid when preparing your English resume is to make sure it is not too long.

Following on from the point about length above, another important mistake to avoid on English resumes is poorly using the space on your resume. As we mentioned, your resume should be limited to one page. However, this is very hard to do if your bullet points are large, your margins are too wide, or you are using a font that is not optimized for spacing.

We often recommend our clients who are struggling to contain their resumes to one page to take a “space inventory” of their resume. A space inventory can make sure that your resume is optimized for spacing and styling.

Some of the simplest ways you can optimize space include:

• Use a font that naturally takes up less space (Times New Roman, Garamond)
• Make your font size and margins smaller (10 or 10.5 font is acceptable)
• Do not have an entire blank line between every section and instead use and underline or border bottom that extends the entire line width 
• Condense sections that are less important, such as contact information or education and keep them to one or two lines
• Avoid redundant information or content that is not directly related to the role you are applying for

By doing these five things alone, you can probably reduce the unnecessary space on your resume by a substantial amount. This might be all you need to get your resume onto one page. There are many more strategies like this that can help your resume be contained to one page.

Yet another important mistake to avoid on English language resumes is to avoid describing yourself too enthusiastically or too passionately. We often get resumes from people who describe themselves as “Dynamite team members,” “Big-time deal makers,” or otherwise extravagant terms. We also see overly excessive summaries such as “Bringing the best of Japan to the world” or “Delivering the best Korea has to offer” when people describe themselves.

While we appreciate the passion, in almost every case, it is better to not describe yourself in such a way. This sounds a little too unprofessional and makes you seem more like an overly passionate and exuberant content creator rather than a prospective employee. When describing your personal summary, it is okay to use terms such as “passionate,” “dynamic,” or “enthusiastic.” But you don’t want to say something that is too extravagant and inappropriate. Keep your expressive terms modest and appropriate. 

The last, and perhaps biggest, mistake to avoid when writing English resumes is using weak verbs and not action verbs. Throughout our content we have emphasized using action verbs. Action verbs show confidence and proactivity. They also clearly demonstrate your ability to accomplish things at your job and show the value you can bring to a company clearly.

To use action verbs effectively, you should start bullet points with strong verbs to communicate your contributions. Words such as “achieved,” “managed,” “developed,” and “led” are action verbs.  

These verbs also help show what you have been capable of accomplishing more clearly. For example, instead of saying “Was responsible for managing a team,” rephrase it to “Managed a team of 10 responsible for delivering product design ideas under tight deadlines.” This strengthens the sentence and highlights your leadership and organizational skills.

Action verbs also help you add variety to your language, which keeps your resume engaging and dynamic. For example, repeating a word like ‘worked’ or ‘did’ makes your resume vague and monotonous.

Action verbs are also clearer and more specific than non-action verbs. Notice the difference between these two entries:

Entry A

• Handled project management responsibilities working with new mobile development applications

Entry B

• Spearheaded the development and launch of a new mobile application, managing a team of 15 developers and designers to deliver the project under budget

As you can see, Entry B provides a much better picture of what exactly the applicant did during their role here. You should make sure the bullet points on your English resumes begin with action verbs and not weak, vague verbs.

By avoiding these mistakes, you can make your professional resume much stronger. These are also relatively easy mistakes to address, and you can correct almost all of them by doing a quick CV audit. We will have more posts on how to make your professional resume stronger in the future. But avoiding these mistakes is a good place to start.

If you would help improving your English resume, contact us today for a free 15-minute consultation.