The errors Mumbai recruiters notice on résumés, ranked

A recruiter spends thirty seconds on a first pass, and errors are disproportionately what they notice — not because they are pedantic, but because an error is the fastest available signal about how someone works. Mumbai hiring is competitive enough that a small carelessness is a cheap reason to move on.

Ranked by damage rather than frequency, here is what actually costs you.

Worst: inconsistencies a checker will find

Dates that do not add up. A role ending in March and the next beginning in January of the same year. Overlapping employment. A total-experience figure that contradicts the dates.

These are read as either carelessness or concealment, and the verification team cannot tell which. Both cost you.

Bad: the wrong company name

A résumé addressed to the previous employer you applied to, or a cover letter naming the wrong firm. It happens constantly and it ends the application immediately.

Check the letter and the file name every single time. This is the most avoidable error on the list and the most fatal.

Bad: claims that collapse on questioning

A percentage you cannot explain, a technology you cannot discuss, a project you cannot describe in detail. These survive the résumé stage and fail in the interview, which is more expensive than being screened out.

Before submitting, go through each claim and ask whether you could defend it twice, three weeks apart, to different people.

Noticeable: tense and person

Past roles in the present tense. First person creeping in — “I managed” — in a document that is otherwise impersonal. Both are read as a document assembled rather than written.

Pick one convention and hold it. Past tense for past roles, present for the current one, no first-person pronouns.

Minor but cumulative

Inconsistent bullet punctuation, two fonts, uneven spacing, a mixture of date formats, an unprofessional email address, a file called Resume_final_v3.

None of these decides an application alone. Together they create an impression of someone who does not check their work, which for many Mumbai roles is exactly the thing being assessed.

How Content Factory writes it

Content Factory is a writing studio in Chennai, and résumés are one of the things we produce. Proofreading is the cheapest service we offer and the one clients are most surprised by, because the errors found are rarely the ones they expected.

Every commission begins with your current document and two or three advertisements you are genuinely targeting. We interview briefly for the numbers behind each claim, because most candidates describe substantial work in language that makes it sound small.

The document is rebuilt single-column with standard headings and month-and-year dates, so applicant tracking systems parse it cleanly, and the wording is aligned to those advertisements without inventing experience you do not have. We will not promise an ATS score — there is no published scoring model and any number quoted to you is invented.

Mumbai clients receive editable Word and PDF within three to five working days, with one revision round. The price is fixed in writing before work begins and the work is yours outright.