Trying to break into the industry? Maybe you just got done with college or you’ve decided upon a career pivot. Whatever it might be, these are 3 of the biggest mistakes you can make in your resume, from the point of view of somebody who actually hires folks.
Putting Technologies That Don’t Make Sense
Sometimes filling in your resume with different technologies is great! Lots of people with, for example, penetration testing resumes seem to love this one. Metasploit, Cobalt Strike, Sliver – great, fantastic! TCP/IP…BGP…huh? It’s great that you’re putting that you understand the technology, but please specify this. If you put things like LAN/WAN or TCP/UDP, I’m going to want to start talking deep CCIE theory with you, not if you can find SQLI in a web application.
So please, keep it simple.
Not Putting What You’re Working On
When you get into the interview, it can usually lead into a point where you start talking about what you’re doing in your homelab or anything you’re studying for. This is wonderful to lead into during the interview, but it does not happen all time. Sometimes people won’t ask you, so you don’t get to talk about it. Or, even worse, they throw away your resume before you even get a chance to interview! Are you currently studying for a certification like OSCP or Security+? Tell the world about it! Certifications underway should directly be on your resume by education, and should clearly be defined as “In Progress”. Other things like homelab projects or things on GitHub can go near skills or somewhere nearby your work experience.
You’re Too Modest
This one is especially a bit impactful statistically to women [Source], and we even made a YouTube Short on it. If you lead a project that helped develop something critical — toot your horn! You need to understand that sometimes getting a job is like selling a used car – you need to convince the other person. If you created a project that interacts with an API to get some cool result, go a bit deeper and don’t just assume people reading the resume won’t care about it.
These aren’t guaranteed to get you a job, but it will absolutely make your resume look better (and pickup on a few more keywords!) and get those talking points underway during an interview. Good luck out there!
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