Executive Resume Mistakes to Avoid

In the last 12 months, I've reviewed 100's of Senior, Principal, and Director-level resumes. These are the 8 most common pitfalls ↓ No fluff, let's jump right in. 8. Grammatical or formatting errors ↳ At this level, small errors signal carelessness. Hiring managers assume the work you submit reflects the work you do. Don't miss here. 7. Adding photos or headshots ↳ Photos introduce bias and look out of place in the US market. They also give ATS systems problems. Leave them off entirely. 6. References, Objectives, Salary ↳ These outdated sections waste prime real estate. Hiring teams know references exist. Objectives are obvious. Salary expectations aren't part of resumes. 5. The overuse of jargon or buzzwords ↳ Vague language like "thought leader" or "dynamic professional" tells a hiring manager nothing. Specificity is what earns credibility. 4. Failing to showcase the impact of your work ↳ At this level, listing responsibilities is not enough. Hiring teams want to know what changed because you were there. Scope, scale, and outcomes matter. 3. Describing unrelated work experience ↳ Everything on your resume should buy its way on. Unrelated content dilutes your positioning and loses readers. Minimize less relevant areas. 2. Not tailoring your resume to the job description ↳ A generic resume means it's much more likely that you aren't speaking to qualifications directly. Take the 10-15 minutes and tailor. 1. Applying to jobs where 100% of the basic (or required) qualifications are not met. ↳ The market is simply too competitive to expect hiring teams to take risks on folks who don't meet the minimum qualifications. In most cases, this is a waste of your time. PS - What would you add to my list? Also - do you agree with the order?

I've reviewed 2,000+ resumes this year. Avoid these mistakes that 90% make. 1. Generic Summaries ❌ "Motivated professional seeking opportunities to leverage my skills..." ✅ "Marketing Director who increased e-commerce revenue 47% through data-driven campaigns and strategic partnerships." 2. Missing Numbers ❌ "Led large team and improved sales." ✅ "Led 15-person sales team to deliver $3.2M in new business, exceeding targets by 28%." 3. Cluttered Formatting ❌ Tiny margins, dense paragraphs, and multiple fonts. ✅ Clean headers, consistent bullet points, and enough white space for easy scanning. 4. Outdated Information ❌ Listing your high school achievements and every job since college. ✅ Your most relevant accomplishments from the past 10-15 years that showcase your career progression. 5. RESPONSIBILITY LISTS ❌ "Responsible for managing client relationships and handling complaints." ✅ "Retained 98% of key accounts and turned 3 dissatisfied clients into top referral sources." 6. ATS-UNFRIENDLY DESIGN ❌ Creative formats with graphics, text boxes, and unique fonts. ✅ Clean, standard formatting with relevant keywords that match the job description. Your resume has 7 seconds to make an impression.  Use these tips to make them count. Share this to help others level up their resume! 📈 And follow me for more advice like this.

Recently, I reviewed a senior executive's resume and was shocked by several critical issues. It became clear that the resume was generated by a resume builder, which unfortunately led to significant shortcomings. Having worked with Senior Executives and helped them secure highly coveted leadership roles, I can confidently say that his resume had several critical flaws. This resume is unlikely to lead to interviews, networking calls, or any further opportunities. ➡ Critical Flaws in the Resume: - Lack of Context in the Summary: The summary was generic and failed to capture the executive’s unique career trajectory and expertise. - No Quantifiable Achievements: The resume lacked metrics to showcase the executive’s impact, making it hard to assess their contributions. - Lacked Value Proposition: There was no clear value proposition, missing an articulation of the executive's unique strengths and how they could benefit potential employers. - Not Aligned to the Target Job: The resume was not tailored to the executive’s target role, failing to highlight relevant skills and experiences. -One-Page Limitation: Constrained to a single page, the resume did not provide enough space to detail key achievements and qualifications, which is crucial for senior-level candidates. ✨ My recommendations for a Compelling Executive Resume: - Highlight the executive's unique career trajectory and expertise. - Use metrics to demonstrate impact. - Articulate unique strengths and problem-solving abilities. - Tailor the content to align with the target job. - Use a two-page format to detail key achievements and qualifications comprehensively. #executiveresume #jobsearch #executive

If your resume has these mistakes, You’re getting rejected before a human ever sees it. I’ve reviewed thousands of resumes as a hiring manager at Riot Games. And I saw the same unforced errors every single day. Let me be blunt: Your resume’s job isn’t to tell your life story. It’s to get you an interview. That’s all. Here are the three biggest mistakes killing your chances: Bad Judgment Calls - Flashy designs, bright colors don’t make you stand out. - They make you look unprofessional. - Even if you’re a designer, keep the art in your portfolio, not your resume. Bias Traps - Remove anything that gives recruiters a chance to judge you unfairly. - No headshots. - No marital status. - No age, religion, or personal info. - Just your city and time zone. That’s all they need. Irrelevant Oversharing - Nobody cares what you did 20 years ago. - Cut outdated jobs, GPA, club memberships, and filler “skills” like “Microsoft Office” or “passionate about gaming.” Every word on your resume should earn its place. Because simplicity isn’t weakness. It’s CONFIDENCE. Or as Da Vinci (and apparently Leonardo the Ninja Turtle) said: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Your resume isn’t a biography. It’s a marketing document for the most important product you’ll ever sell: YOUR CAREER. If you want to see real examples of what to cut (and why), watch this: 👉 Remove These from Your Resume (Ex-Riot Games Hiring Manager Explains Why) - 🎥 https://lnkd.in/gDPekXTR You’re one clean edit away from more callbacks. Cut the fluff. Keep the wins. Get the interview.

Most resumes don’t get rejected for lack of experience. They get rejected for how that experience is presented. Over the last 3 months, I’ve reviewed over 50 resumes.  Friends, Referrals, and community members. Each time, I notice the same patterns. The mistakes are often small but costly. The wins are subtle but powerful. Here’s what I’ve learned from those reviews and what you can fix today: What actually works? 1 - Tailored Content The best resumes don’t try to be everything to everyone. They’re sharp, role-specific, and rich with keywords that match the job description. 2 - Quantifiable Achievements A line like “handled sales” is forgettable. A line like “Increased sales by 20% in 6 months” gets noticed. 3 - Simple, Clean Formatting Single-column. Consistent fonts. No design drama. ATS systems will thank you. So will recruiters. 4 - Professional Summary > Objective Statement Start with a crisp summary that answers: “What do I bring to the table?” 5 - Action Verbs “Led,” “Built,” “Implemented,” “Optimized.” Not “Responsible for” or “Helped with.” What to absolutely avoid? 1 - Generic Phrases “Hardworking team player” is white noise. Show it. Don’t say it. 2 - Outdated or Irrelevant Info That 2012 internship? Probably time to let it go. 3 - Over-designed Layouts ATS bots don’t care about your Canva skills. Keep it functional. 4 - Typos & Formatting Errors One comma out of place? Might not ruin your chances. But why risk it? 5 - Missing Contact Info Yes, this still happens. Double-check that your phone and email are visible. Bonus enhancements that make a difference: - Use metrics in every role, not just the latest one. - Match your skill section to what the job actually demands. - Move education below experience, unless you're a fresh grad. - Include certifications and recent courses. - Keep font styles and spacing uniform throughout. My suggestion? Take an hour this weekend and do a ruthless edit. - Cut fluff. - Add metrics. - Tweak layout. Ask a friend for feedback. And if you want a second set of eyes, I’m happy to help. I regularly do resume reviews (for a small fee). If you're looking for personalized, actionable feedback, DM me or drop a comment. Let’s make your experience shine the way it deserves to. -- ♻️ Reshare if this might help someone. ▶️ Join 2,485+ in the Tidbits WhatsApp group → link in comments

I’ve Reviewed Thousands - If Your Resume Contains Any of These 4 Things, You’re Losing Interviews. After reviewing thousands of resumes and interviewing candidates across the globe over the last 20+ years, I’ve come to one conclusion: Most resumes don’t get rejected because candidates lack experience. They get rejected because they make avoidable mistakes. Many professionals spend years building their careers and only 15 minutes building the document that’s supposed to represent it. Here are four resume mistakes I wish people would stop making immediately. 1. Trying to Look Important Instead of Being Clear One of the fastest ways to lose credibility is by using complicated language to describe simple work. I’ve seen candidates turn: “Managed employee onboarding” into “Orchestrated end-to-end human capital integration initiatives across diverse stakeholder ecosystems.” Nobody talks like that. We certainly do not. The best candidates communicate with confidence, clarity, and precision. If a hiring manager needs a translator or the Oxford Dictionary to understand your resume, you’ve already lost their attention. 2. Sending the Same Resume to Every Job This is one of the biggest reasons candidates never get a call. If the role is asking for operational management, change management, project leadership, employee relations, or commercial acumen, your resume should clearly demonstrate those capabilities. A generic resume tells employers one thing: “You didn’t invest time in this opportunity.” 3. Hiding Achievements in Walls of Text Recruiters and hiring managers don’t read resumes. They scan them. If your biggest achievements are buried inside long paragraphs, they might never be seen. Make accomplishments impossible to miss. Think clarity, not creativity. 4. Typos, Formatting Errors, and Inconsistencies You may think it’s a small mistake. Hiring managers don’t. A resume is a sample of your work. If the document you’re presenting as your best work contains errors, it immediately raises questions about attention to detail. The best resumes are not the most beautiful. They’re the clearest. They tell a compelling story, demonstrate impact, and make it easy for someone to say: “Let’s speak with this person.” Also, please take out the time and get to know the recruiter and the company. I cannot begin to tell you how many direct emails and messages I have personally received in my inbox starting with “Dear Ma’am” or “Dear Hiring Manager” 😊 These are from my perspective alone and I welcome more points and suggestions to add to this conversation. #CareerAdvice #ResumeTips #Recruitment #HumanResources #Leadership #JobSearch #CareerGrowth #TalentAcquisition

You know that feeling when you order something online that looks incredible in the photos...but when it arrives, you realize it is flimsy, generic, and nothing like what you thought you were getting?  That’s how a lot of AI resumes are reading lately.  At first glance, many AI-assisted resumes look sophisticated. They’re filled with polished executive language, business jargon, inflated summaries, endless competencies, and metrics layered everywhere across the page. Very oh-la-la. Yet once you start reading them closely, they often start sounding like a bunch of disjointed or overinflated facts. There is no story. And somewhere in all that polish and optimization, the actual person disappears. Yes, resumes need to have a certain level of refinement and structure. I understand that. But eventually, a real person still sits down to evaluate whether they can picture you solving problems inside their organization. If they can’t relate to your material or clearly understand your leadership story, you’ll be passed over. A few things I think professionals should keep in mind right now: 1. Get to the substance faster. Long executive summaries and heavily polished positioning statements are becoming exhausting to read. Employers need to understand your actual work, your scope, your leadership, and the business problems you solved. Period. Get to the point, fast. 2. Make important qualifications easy to spot. If a role requires large-team leadership, transformation experience, multi-site oversight, P&L ownership, or board exposure, do not make readers hunt for these facts. 3. Metrics only matter when they provide real context. I love strong business results. Most hiring leaders do, too. But random percentages without explanation often create more confusion than value. A 40% improvement means very little if the reader does not understand what changed, why it mattered, or the scale of the impact. A few strong, well-contextualized business wins are often far more powerful than a page full of disconnected numbers. 4. Write like a human talking to another human. One of the biggest resume mistakes I see is overcomplicating experience to sound more “executive.” Clarity is far more persuasive. Most hiring leaders are scanning quickly and trying to connect the dots fast. If your resume requires translation, they will often move on before they fully understand your value. At the executive level, especially, strong resumes are not about trying to sound like the smartest in the room. The best resumes make business impact, leadership scope, and strategic value easy to understand. The professionals standing out right now are often the ones who sound the most real, specific, and grounded in actual business outcomes.

As a hiring manager, and a manager of hiring managers, I've probably reviewed close to 1,000 resumes in my career. Here are the biggest mistakes I see people make over and over again (and what to do instead): ❌ Focusing on responsibilities rather than impact. If your title is "e-commerce editor," someone reading your resume can probably guess at what your basic duties were—so don't waste a lot of space listing them out. ✅ Emphasize the accomplishments you had in each role. What impact did you make to the team or the business? Did you increase traffic to your vertical by X%? Contribute to the highest-ever Black Friday/Cyber Monday revenue sitewide? Streamline the publishing process? Tweaking your bullet points to highlight impact will help you stand out from the crowd. ❌ Not tailoring your resume to the job you're applying for. When I was hiring a Director of SEO Content at Policygenius, it was shocking how many resumes I got from very experienced editors that did not include the words "SEO" or "search" at all. They might have had the relevant experience, but how could I know that? ✅ Take the time to make sure your bullets match up to the job description. Don't force the hiring manager or recruiter to guess at your qualifications; make it easy for them to see that you're a great fit. ❌ Overstuffing your resume. I'm not strict about the one-page rule (though if you have less than 5 years of work experience, stick to one page!). But I once saw a resume where the person used four whole pages (!) to cover the last four years of their career. Unless you're creating an academic CV, a resume is meant to be a synopsis of your career, with emphasis on the last 5-10 years—not an exhaustive accounting of everything you've ever done at work. ✅ Be ruthless about highlighting your biggest accomplishments in each role, and keep it to two pages or less. Once you've got 10-15 years of experience under your belt, your early career roles should start dropping off your resume altogether (let's face it, they probably aren't relevant anyway). Bonus note: A big contributor to overlong resumes is summary statement bloat. If your summary statement is 3/4 of a page, that's not a summary! Try for 4-5 lines—1/4 page at most—and put those big accomplishments under the relevant role instead. I could go on at much greater length about each of these—which would you like to hear more about? And what are your favorite resume tips?

Unsolicited Advice From an Executive Recruiter After 20+ years reviewing resumes, here are a few resume basics that still trip up strong candidates—and quietly get them passed over. • Don’t include a photo. Photos invite unconscious bias. Age, gender, race, attractiveness—none of that should influence a hiring decision, yet it often does. Let your experience speak, not your headshot. • Address employment gaps head-on. If there’s a gap, explain it briefly: caregiving, health, layoffs, consulting, education. When gaps are unexplained, recruiters are left to assume—and assumptions rarely work in your favor. • Update your location. At minimum, include city/state. Many roles require residency in a specific area or time zone. If that information is missing, your resume may never make it past the first screen. Other common mistakes I see daily: • Responsibilities listed instead of results • No metrics (numbers matter) • A generic resume for every role • Titles that don’t match scope (inflated or undersold) • Outdated skills or certifications • Spelling/formatting errors (yes, still happening) • Overly long resumes with no clear narrative And the hard truth: Recruiters aren’t rejecting you. They’re making fast decisions based on incomplete or unclear information. Your resume’s job is to remove doubt—not create it. Small fixes can dramatically change outcomes. #UnsolicitedAdvice #ExecutiveRecruiter #ResumeTips #JobSearch #CareerAdvice #Hiring #ProfessionalGrowth #LeadershipCareers

If rejection emails keep coming, it may not be your skills. It could be your résumé. I've been a hiring manager, I've worked in recruiting, and I've personally reviewed 15,000+ résumés. Here's what you need to know: These are the seven errors that can ruin the chances of even the most qualified candidate: 1️⃣ Bullets focused on function instead of IMPACT ↳ Alec had been applying for months. ↳ He had solid experience, but his résumé focused on tasks, not impact. Original: "Created content for various social media platforms.” Better: "Developed an Instagram social media campaign that led to a 4X increase in engagement, and over $200K in new business in 6 months." 2️⃣ Listing general duties instead of specific DETAILS. ↳ Suzanne's résumé felt generic. ↳ She left out the skills she used to get the job done. Original: "Analyzed and reported data on customers to senior leadership" Better: "Used R and Tableau to analyze customer fraud metrics, producing monthly dashboards on key indicators for senior leadership." 3️⃣ Summaries that try to fit in instead of STAND OUT. ↳ Bob's summary was a key word soup. ↳ Dated clichés didn't differentiate him. Original: “Results-driven professional with strong communications skills...” Better: “Dedicated and collaborative project manager with experience navigating complex challenges under time and budget constraints.” 4️⃣ Using AI language instead of being AUTHENTIC. ↳ Marty put his résumé through AI wanting to sound "smart." ↳ The result was stilted language that didn't mean anything. Original: Utilized my competencies to effectuate revenue augmentation. Better: "Quickly built rapport and turned prospects into satisfied customers, consistently exceeding sales quotas." 5️⃣ Sloppiness instead of clean, clear and ERROR-FREE. ↳ Kayla's résumé content was good, but it was messy. ↳ It sent the message she didn't have attention to detail. Original: Typos, awkward sentences and changing format. Better: Correct grammar and punctuation throughout, in a consistent format. 6️⃣ Going for flashy design instead of EASY TO READ. ↳ Nicole wanted her résumé to be eye-catching. ↳ It was overdesigned and hard to read. Original: Included graphics, icons, multiple fonts and colors. Better: Sticking with a clean and simple format that is easy to scan quickly 7️⃣ Confusing work details instead of CONSISTENCY. ↳ Max's résumé and LinkedIn weren't aligned. ↳ It gave the impression of dishonesty. Original: He had different jobs and dates on his résumé vs. LinkedIn. Better: Alignment on jobs, titles, dates, and skill set across all materials and platforms. Most résumés fail for preventable reasons. Don’t let yours be one of them! 🎉You've got this and I've got you!🎉 🔖 Save this! You’ll need it next time you update your résumé! ♻️ Share to help others create strong résumés 🔔 Follow Sarah Baker Andrus for more career strategies