Twelve things on your resume that are costing you interviews

We read a great many resumes, and the same faults recur. None of them is a matter of writing talent. All twelve are decisions, and all twelve can be reversed in an afternoon.

Most candidates have four or five of these. Fixing them is the cheapest improvement available to anybody, with or without help.

The twelve

• A two-column template, which parses badly and loses your work history in the database
• An objective statement, which tells a reader what they already know
• Responsibilities instead of results, with no numbers anywhere
• A skills list with no evidence anywhere else on the page
• Personal details — date of birth, marital status, father’s name, full address
• A declaration and signature block, which no employer now expects
• Current CTC on the document, anchoring the offer before anyone has decided they want you
• Notice period omitted, which Indian employers genuinely need
• Every bullet inside a role in date order rather than relevance order
• Six or more bullets per role, so none stands out
• A gap or short tenure left unexplained, inviting the worst assumption
• The same document sent to three different kinds of role

The four that cost the most

The two-column template, because the application never reaches a human. Responsibilities instead of results, because the document says nothing. CTC on the page, because it caps the offer. And the unexplained gap, because it converts a fact into a suspicion.

Fix those four and most resumes improve more than any amount of rewriting achieves.

What to do with the space you recover

Removing personal details, the objective and the declaration frees roughly a quarter of page one. Use it for two more quantified achievements, placed in the top third where they are actually read.

What is not on the list

Font choice, colour, length within reason, and whether you use a summary. These get discussed endlessly and decide very little. The twelve above decide a great deal.

How Content Factory writes it

Content Factory fixes all twelve as a matter of course, which is why our documents look plainer and perform better than the templates they replace.

If you would rather do it yourself, our written review names which of the twelve your resume carries and what to do about each. Two working days, and no rewriting.

Either way the price is fixed in writing beforehand, and we will tell you if your resume genuinely does not need our help.