What do employers absolutely not want to see on a résumé?

A resume is a bridge that stands in the middle of you and the job you’re applying for. And to get that dream job, your bridge must be strong enough i.e. your resume must be good enough.


What is a Resume?

A Resume is a document that holds valuable details of your background, educational qualification, skills, accomplishments and prior work experience. A Resume is basically used to create an image of the candidate appearing for the interview, in the mind of the employer/interviewer.

Usually it is recommended that a resume should not be longer than one page. To be able to sum up the stories and achievements of life on a sheet of paper might seem challenging and not fair at the start but that’s how it is!

An employer on an average spends about 10 seconds on each resume to decide whether you are a good candidate or not.

Though resume making may seem as a heap of a task in the beginning but once you get through the interview process and get selected, it will all feel worthwhile and good. And frankly speaking, it’s not that difficult to make a good and impressive resume.

In the beginning you all must be trying to gather tips on what to include and what not to, and must be getting many opinions from various people and online websites that you must be referring to. But there will be variation in everyone’s opinion. For example some might suggest you to mandatorily put your photograph in the resume, while others may be strictly against it.

As mentioned, what employers would want to see on your resume or would not want to see on your resume is a rather subjective question and would vary from person to person and organization to organization.

But there definitely are some things that your future employer would not want to see on your resume, the ticket to your job.

  • The resume should not be long:

    The resume ideally should be no longer than a page. At max it can stretch upto 2 pages, but longer than that is a big no no. You might want to include so many things in it, but some additional things that are making your resume longer may cost you your job.
  • Spelling Mistakes:

    Imagine yourself waiting for your interview call in the waiting room and you realise that there is a spelling mistake in your resume. Looks bad! But might happen with you.

    In Fact it happened to me too! I had my first job interview and I realised that I had spelt a word as simple as,“Interests” wrong. Sounds pretty silly but might happen. And no company would like to hire a person who can make such a silly mistake in such an important document like the resume.

    Putting yourself in the interviewers shoes, a person who can make a silly mistake on such an important document, that person will be prone to making mistakes at a larger level once he or she joins the company. And no company would like to hire such a candidate.
  • Talk roles, not designations:

    You may have been the CXO/Chairman/ Managing Director/CEO of any organization, but unless you are able to explain what your organization actually does and what role you play in that, it is almost useless to the next company you are applying to.

    What is most important to them during the recruitment process is a short description of your past job so that they can understand your past job profile.
    • Check out the video
    “We would love to help you create your CV. You can whatsapp us on +91-9716366366 and consult an expert for free”
  • Lies:

    Oh! Your dream company wants you to be fluent in a foreign language too apart from the existing skills that you have. Why don’t you put it in your resume?     What bad can it do?
    I’ll tell you, you just might get blacklisted from your”dream company” for lying on your resume. You should never lie on your resume, even if it is going to cost you your job because if you get caught.
    And also, if by any chance you get the job after that untrue fact, you might regret later, because you might not be able to fulfil your entire responsibilities.
  • Irrelevant facts:

    What difference will it make to the organisation if you’re married or not, have kids or not, or what is your exact address? So try to avoid stating such information which is going to make absolutely no difference to the organization. And mentioning such details is only going to lengthen your resume which is absolutely not preferred.
  • Irrelevant experience:

    Having 10yrs of experience and still mentioning college activities does not make sense and will rather lengthen your resume but will hardly make any effect on the interviewer like it did 10yrs ago.


Above mentioned are some things that no interviewer or employer would like to see on your resume but then there are some things that the majority of employers would not like to see on your resume but if you as a candidate can justify them, there’s no bad thing about it.

Like for example you have a back year in university, if given a choice, no company would want to hire such a candidate under normal circumstances considering that such a candidate will not be much skilled. But if you as a candidate are able to justify it or even say able to prove it as a learning, it can be really useful for you. You might even grab that job!

There’s a new trend up in the market, that of colourful resumes and you may feel that these are the resumes of the future and you may also consider them as a good option because as per you they might be a good representation of you as creative. But, hey stop there! Try and understand the company that you are applying to first.

Maybe that company doesn’t want to shift to the colourful resumes yet and would prefer traditional black and white resumes. And however these resumes may be popular among the new generation, the majority of the companies are yet to accept them.

Another important consideration these days is your LinkedIn account. It is recommended by companies to have an up to date LinkedIn account and it’s link or ID can be put up in your resume so that your employer can easily look up your account.


It is really important to make your resume as per the job description and also the requirements of the company to raise your chances of getting selected. Most of the companies these days use an ATS (Application Tracking System) system to filter out relevant resumes. This way the recruiters don’t have to go through hundreds or thousands of resumes.

It works on an algorithm that scrutinizes the resumes and picks out all the words from your resumes that according to it describe you. And this profile is then matched with the desired profile as uploaded by the recruiter.

Because of this system in place, though you may be the best candidate but you might not get through it because your resume failed.

Though because of various reasons, resume writing is becoming difficult, but there is a good side to it. New and more online resume making services are coming up, where one is better than the other. One of these really good resume making services is provided by CV Owl where to make this task easy and simple they provide sample resumes as per various designations and positions. This not only makes your task to make a resume easy but it also provides some ideas to make your resume more impactful!

Your CV or resume is your first impression for any company . With the help of CV Owl you can get a well structured CV and your time will be saved. Everything on your CV should be written in a formal manner and in a precise way. You have only 20 seconds to impress your recruiter with your CV, make the best out of it. Visit our series “The HR Talk” where we help you know everything about your job interview from the recruiters.

Try CV Owl as we help you furnish a fully-formatted in a chronological order resume or cover letter. You can also try our CV Review service, through which you get a CV writing expert reviewing the insight of your CV and advising you, so that you can make your CV stand out .


Want an expert opinion?
Mention your Email ID
Attach Resume/Coverletter/SOP