A new CareerBuilder survey found that among human resource managers, who are typically the ones who determine which applicants get in front of the actual hiring managers, 75% have caught a lie on a resume.
The pressure to make a good first impression quickly is high, nearly 40% of hiring managers said they spend less than a minute looking at a resume. In their effort to get noticed, however, some candidates are making critical blunders. The HR managers surveyed shared their most notable and cringe-worthy real-life examples of gaffes found on actual resumes:
An applicant’s resume had a different font type for every sentence.
A 22-year-old applicant claimed three different degrees.
An applicant listed 40 different jobs in one year.
An applicant referred to having “as many marriages as jobs.”
An applicant listed out their extensive arrest history.
An applicant stated at the bottom of their resume that they do not like babies or puppies.
An applicant’s resume was only one sentence.
An implausible resume is not the only obstacle preventing job seekers from getting interviews and job offers. Hiring managers identified the seven most common resume mistakes job seekers make that are instant deal breakers:
Typos or bad grammar: 77%
Unprofessional email address: 35%
Resume without quantifiable results: 34%
Resume with long paragraphs of text: 25%
Resume is generic, not customized to company: 18%
Resume is more than two pages: 17%
No cover letter with resume: 10%
The survey was conducted online within the U.S. by The Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder among 1,138 hiring and human resource managers ages 18 and over (employed full-time, not self-employed), including 1,023 hiring managers and human resource professionals and 309 HR managers in the private sector between June 21 and July 15, 2018. Data for employers were weighted where necessary by company size and job level to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population.
