Updating a resume is one of those tedious parts of finding a new job. Unless you have done it a lot, it can be hard to even quantify your literal life experience into a few bullet points. So it never hurts to seek out some help. Or, if you want to feel better about yourself, take a peek at what not to do.

Someone asked, “Employers, what can someone put on a resume that sends it straight to the shredder?” and netizens shared all the questionable choices they have encountered. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorite examples, and be sure to comment your own thoughts below. 

#1

Well, guy made it through the resume but almost didn’t make it through the onboarding paperwork.

Entry level position, guy was 19 I think. Nice enough kid, low life experience but that’s how it all starts right?

Emergency Contact info

Name – Mom

Relationship – Good

…so like if we called your mom, and you were hurt, she’d care?

Image credits: Seattlepowderhound

#2

I received a resume last week that had notes on it “insert relevant skills here” and “maybe change font” “fill this space with buzz words” this was on his LinkedIn profile as well. If you can’t pay attention to the resume you send out I can’t trust you’ll pay attention to anything else.

Image credits: subtlelikeawreckball

#3

I used to work for a bar, a girl came in with an application saying she was 22 but then listeded she’d graduated high school that year. I fired off a few questions then slipped in what’s your birthday. She was barely 17.

Image credits: karebearjedi

The word résumé itself comes from French (hence the strange pronunciation) and means “to summarize.” Which is a pretty good way to describe turning your entire life into a one-page description. There is some, possibly apocryphal, evidence that it was none other than Leonardo Da Vinci who wrote the first one in order to secure employment. It’s somewhat sad that a literal genius still had to go through the same process as the rest of us. 

These days, the vast majority of résumés are still a page or two of words, but the age of the internet is slowly switching things up. Now one can find video résumés that folks upload to YouTube, for example, or even send out as TikTok. While it perhaps stands out a bit, scrolling through a video to find one particular aspect of a candidate seems more annoying than useful. 

#4

Military spouse (with rank no less)

Image credits: HellbendingSnototter

#5

This guy put a tinder bio at the head of his resume. All his likes and dislikes, with a headshot of him holding an axe while looking sweaty.

I do IT work…

Image credits: KhaosElement

#6

One resume I got while managing a head shop included how much he could bench and the characters he played in high school theater. He was in his late mid twenties.

Image credits: ethnj

#7

“Time Person of the Year 2006”

Image credits: No-Arm-

#8

I didn’t make it past the name line on someone’s resume one time.

We were hiring a CFO and Googling their name revealed an SEC complaint for a 9 figure fraud. At the time, there wasn’t a verdict on the books, but I wasn’t gonna wait for one. See you never.

Image credits: withurwife

#9

Had a dude turn in his application with black marker lines redacting all of his info. Only things left were his name, a phone number, and a note saying “We can discuss these details during my interview.”

He, in fact, did not get an interview.

Image credits: octopornopus

#10

When I was in high school I worked in a shoe store at the mall. We got a resume once for a sales job that had, under the “Other Interests” section, “Special relationship with the one they call Satan.” Yes, really.

I wanted to interview her, just to see what she’d actually say in person. My manager vetoed that, sadly.

Image credits: berecyntia

#11

The only resume I have thrown right in the proverbial shredder was that of the wife of a friend of mine. I was attempting to get her a job at my employer. She had no degree or relevant experience, but we needed a receptionist, and people commonly move up from those jobs into other admin positions. Plus, it’s government work, so good benefits, lots of paid holidays, etc. Bottom line, I was doing this underqualified, unemployed person a massive favor by giving her a reference and a chance. We didn’t have any other applicants. The job was hers to lose. She didn’t know that, so she brought her A game. Here are some excerpts from her cover letter:

“I may not have a degree, but I have what engineers don’t have, 10 years of experience.”

“Engineers aren’t very organized people and I can keep them in line.”

“I have better social skills than engineers do.”

I am not paraphrasing. Those are things she wrote when she sent me her resume and cover letter to look over before she submitted them online to apply. I was just like, “You know I’m an engineer, right?” She did. I continued, “You know the job you’d be applying for is a receptionist position, not an engineer position, right?” She seemed pretty sure she could move up and be an engineer in a year or so. That is not at all a thing in my field (it’s one of those fields where everyone is required to be licensed and you have to have a degree in this just to be allowed to take the exam to get the license), but she was absolutely sure it was.

I told her that if she was going to submit this, she wouldn’t be hired because the entire panel was engineers. She didn’t listen, and submitted it. She even listed me as a reference. I told my boss she was someone I was trying to help and she wouldn’t help herself, which was accurate, but “I’ve got what engineers don’t have, 10 years of experience!” became the office joke for years to come. Every time someone reached the 10 year mark of their career, we’d be like, “You can’t be an engineer anymore. The crazy lady said 10 years is the limit.” lol

Image credits: ifnotmewh0

#12

I once put that I ruled France from 1693-1702 with an iron fist, invented the letter G, was a world class Candyland player, and was a unicorn rancher in my cover letter.

The job was an IT position at an advertising company that went on and on about how creative everyone that works there is. After I listed my above accomplishments, I said, “OK. So maybe I haven’t done all of those things listed above but I have (list of boring IT c**p).”

I got an email the next day from HR saying that was the best cover letter they had ever gotten and they’d hire me without even interviewing me based on it but they were a Mac business and all my experience was on Windows.

Image credits: rhett342

#13

Okay, I was a writing tutor at the college level for 10 years. We also helped graduates of the university. I swear I am not making this up.

A graduate who had worked teaching English in Japan, and at other positions, for a few years after getting his degree, came in for help updating his resume. He reported that he’d been looking for work for a while, with no luck.

The profile section at the head of his resume listed accomplishments, including, “I have climbed Mount Fuji fueled only by Quaaludes and caffeine.”

He was crestfallen when I told him that although I was duly impressed by this feat, he really, really needed to remove it.

Edit: because of course.

Image credits: Foodoglove

#14

His mother handed it to me with him just quietly standing beside her, looking like this wasn’t his idea.

Image credits: tangcameo

#15

The amount of halfwits that put Brexit voter on their CVs is just weird. Straight in the bin.

Image credits: CallMeLarryKidkill

#16

I once got a resume with the worst formatting and grammar. It was clear the person was a non-native English speaker. I don’t usually do this, but I recreated her resume, re-organized it and corrected grammar/spelling mistakes and sent it back to her. I hope she got a job. She wasn’t a good fit based on her resume, otherwise I would have given her the benefit of the doubt and at least interviewed her.

#17

They didn’t list a single job. Their only experience was several years of jiu jitsu.

Image credits: penholdtogatineau

#18

Height, weight, marital status, religion

Image credits: AussieKoala-2795

#19

Had a guy put on his resume that he invented the dollar, owned Microsoft and Google and Ford, was an astronaut, and founded New Zealand.

This was when I managed an Aldi store and he was applying as an associate. But he was clear to say on his resume that our business model could be vastly improved with his expertise.

I *almost* brought him in for an interview just for fun, but I couldn’t really find the time along with the real applicants.

Image credits: Moist-Pickle-2736

#20

Lawyer here. Multiple pages kill me. Academia can be different, but in practice, nothing you need a second page to say is worth the time.

Image credits: ParallelPeterParker

#21

Student at the school of Life

Image credits: mr_kenobi

#22

Like a lot of companies nowadays we do blind applications, no mention of age, gender, name, where you studied etc. allowed on the part that goes to people doing the evaluation.

We also attract a lot of applicants from prestigious universities, some of whom _really_ feel the need to find a way to mention the name of the institution in their competency answers as though it will help more than actually demonstrating that you are a good candidate for the job. Technically I could throw your application away, I usually won’t unless you’re especially obnoxious about it but it definitely does not help.

…oh but one person did add “MENSA IQ” to their application in response to a question that had no relation to such information and that did get rapidly dropped because that’s a huge ‘I’m going to be insufferable to work with’ red flag.

*EDIT* oh and the personal statement that began with ‘as a large language model…’ didn’t get very far.

Image credits: MagicBez

#23

“Life Coach” and all their education is from sketchy seminars at the Radisson by the airport.

That’s and hashtag bossbabe, CEO of their make up MLM.

Image credits: TobylovesPam

#24

I once got a resume written in crayon.

Image credits: hyperiongate

#25

I’m sure a lot of us have made mistakes on our CVs. I once changed my email address but forgot to change .co.uk to .com and the interviewer asked me about it at the end of an interview for a job I did not get.

The worst I’ve seen is from a girl named Clairfe. What an interesting name, is it Irish? My colleague showed me the application form handed in alongside the CV, where CLAIRE had managed to spell her own name right.

Image credits: Time-Cover-8159

#26

Nudes. Like, any picture of yourself is probably going to get the resume thrown out because of potential lawsuits, but hearing that shriek of “DEAR GOD WHY” from the hotel manager’s desk while they were going through resumes was hilarious.

Like, bro, your butt was not that nice. Why did you attach it.

Image credits: squirtlesquads

#27

I once received a resume in the mail that had no telephone number, address or email. He called a few days later to ask why he hadn’t received any reply. I asked him to get a copy of his resume so we could review it together. I asked him to tell me the address we might have replied to; then the telephone number and finally the email.

After a long pause, he said, “Aww, f**k!” and hung up.

Image credits: chili555

#28

I know some people think they’re pretty slick but when I look through resumes I hate the overused “business jargon”. Nothing turns me off more then a solid page of word salad that could be summed up in 2-3 sentences. It gives off a minimum word count essay vibe.

#29

Applying for an entry level job at a small business and your desired salary is more than the owner even makes

#30

Make sure you attach the right file. I once had somebody attach his court summons for a DUI charge. Instant deny.

#31

I’ve seen hundreds of CVs that are still templates with [insert job title here] still on them

#32

I had someone who started off on their cover letter with “Let me introduce myself…” and “I’m very excited to get to know your company.” Yet…we’d just fired him a couple of weeks ago from a management position and he was applying for a different newly posted job.

#33

A couple we didn’t shred but definitely did not call and saved for future laughs:

– “Can cook anything related to a potato” (followed by the longest list of potato dishes I have ever seen and this job did not involve food in any form)

– In special memberships section: “Have a blockbuster card”

#34

So I’ve never trashed a resume, but twice in my career I’ve had to make the decision to fire someone during their first week.

First was for a customer service representative. The job requirements were fairly simple; good understanding of excel, prior experience with quickbooks (this was at a small business), and bilingual Spanish and English. She said “I’m an expert at excel. I know everything it can do.” First red flag, but I wasn’t in the interview where she said that, so I only found out after the fact. Said she had worked with quickbooks for 5 years at her last job, and grew up in a Spanish speaking household and it was her first language and learned English in school.

Cut to the first week; any Spanish callers she would put on hold and make up some excuse of how she was in the middle of something and needed one of the other reps to get it. After a couple of days the other reps realized she couldn’t speak Spanish so they started talking s**t about her, in Spanish, in front of her, and when they would laugh, she would laugh along like she understood the joke.

When she did basic onboarding with quickbooks, our accountant said it was like she’s never used any accounting software before, let alone quickbooks.

When I was showing her how to use the excel spreadsheets that were built to run all of the order entry, she was flabbergasted by a basic formula that multiplied three fields together. When I told her there’s a vlookup function, she said “oh, I didn’t know I would need to know programming.” (Which by the way, she didn’t need to know it, I was just explaining how it worked.

Anyway, started on Monday, sent packing Friday morning. Any one of those things we might have kept her and let her grow into the role, but she straight up lied about the only three requirements on the posting. Sayonara.

The second was much more recent; last year in fact. The private equity firm that owns the corporation I work for owns another company on the east coast. They were hit with a ransomware attack and their IT team was completely inept, so the private equity firm contracted our IT team to fly out and help them. One of the things we were going to be doing, aside from remediating the issue, was onboarding their new IT director, getting them familiar with the existing infrastructure (which we were rebuilding for them) and then making clear the expectations around his role and what the board would be wanting from him.

He showed up on his first day at 10:30AM; we had been there since 7. We talked to him for about 10 minutes; introduced ourselves and talked about which areas of what is now HIS network we were focusing on, and made it clear we would only be in town for three more days before we had to fly back to LA. We said feel free to jump in with any of us and we’ll show you what we’re doing, why it’s important, and how it relates to everything. He proceeded to go to his new office, shut the door (didn’t meet anyone else in the company) and “set up his email” for the rest of the f*****g day. Oh, and he left at 3:30. We were there until 7, went to dinner, and then proceeded to continue working until 1AM. We did that every day we were there. Remember, we’re in major crisis mode. The next day he comes in, 10:30 again, and goes straight to his office, closes the door, and said he needed to finish setting up his email. He had one meeting with the CEO, where he only talked about his hobbies, and then left for the day at 2:30. On the third day, he came in, and was fired first thing in the morning.

The conversation was something like “look man… you have to run this whole operation; we know it right now because we’ve been building it for you. You have no idea how to operate and maintain this when we leave, and you’ve wasted two of our 4 days here doing a task that takes 3 minutes for a level 1 it tech. Hell, you could have TASKED one of your L1 techs to do it for you, so you could do, you know, DIRECTOR s**t. But you’re clearly not the right guy for this role, because the right guy would have been in the trenches with us, helping where possible, and learning everything there is to learn.”

Kinda felt bad about that one, the guy quit another high paying job to take this one. But man, if you can’t put in effort your first week in the job when the entire company is in a crisis mode and you’ve got contractors on site working 16 hour days… ya… f**k off.

#35

Relevant Experience: Leader of a raid guild in the popular MMO World of Warcraft. I am responsible for coordinating the efforts of 25 individuals working toward a common goal, demonstrating leadership and problem solving skills.

#36

The phrase “attention to detail” makes me look for any type of mistake 10x more than I normally would. Because more often than not, there is some mistake which immediately contradicts the attention to detail.

Pro-tip: leave that phrase out, it never helps and can only make you look silly

Image credits: CPOx

#37

I was hiring for a lab technician job and this guy came highly recommended by someone in purchasing I think it was. So he got a shot at the interview. His resume wasn’t terrible, but there were gaps. He listed his high school graduation date and then his AA degree from the local CC was a good 10 years later. I mean, that’s ok, but there was no work experience listed for that time period either, soooo.

Then came the interview with my lead technician and me. Walk the guy into a small meeting room and sit down. Before I can even introduce us, he pulls this laminated piece of paper out of his folio slams it down on the table and pushes it across the table and says, “So when do I start?”

The document was a letter of recommendation from his CC physics teacher. A glowing assessment of the candidate which greatly conflicted with my assessment based on his behavior.

He did not get the job.

#38

Not a resume but occasionally someone will cold-message me on LinkedIn, and whenever I can I’ll reply if it’s a student looking for guidance in my filed and take a call and talk them through some s**t they should know. Anyhow, one of those messages began “Dear Mr [name], I hope this message finds you *in the pink of your health.* I’m still not fully over that.

Image credits: ResponsibilityOk2173

#39

Had an application for a management position at a public library. Job listing specified that an MLIS (Master’s in Library and Information Science) degree is required. Got an application from one person who was attending community college, earing an Associate’s degree in music. Their only “Management” experience was running a K-Pop fan club.

Another person spelled the library’s name incorrectly.

Image credits: ca77ywumpus

#40

I had someone once put “mom to child actor” and she listed that she homeschooled on set and managed their schedule and things of that nature

I had someone else who put “babysitting Daniel” she made him eat his vegetables among other things. It was cute.

My absolute favourite was a guy who wrote his attributes landscape in italics on a piece of paper that had a background of a unicorn on a cliff with a sunset. He came and asked for it back when he wasn’t hired.

Image credits: Roopchanchillin

#41

The best one I received was by either an extremely dedicated troll or someone in the middle of a psychotic break. Maybe both. It was 19 pages of the most insane rambling I’ve ever seen. Highlights include:

– Every sentence ending in an exclamation point. Every! Single! One!

– His entire life story, beginning from Year 0 (he was born)

– A photo gallery section, with a picture of his cat, his Nana, and various scenery (this wasn’t for a photography position)

– A 3rd party review by one of his “teachers” at the very fake colleges he attended.

– The makings of a dating profile, with a list of his favorite movies, music, video games, etc

My coworkers laughed our asses off for a good bit after seeing that. Not only did I not shred it, but I printed off a copy and should probably have it framed haha

#42

Food service experience applying for entry level call centre job put as her daily duties “wept and moped at the end of every shift”. I’m not gonna lie, I hired her and she was fine. I worked food service and was like where’s the lie?

#43

I’ve never thrown out a resume for something egregious but I will never forget my interview with an underdog candidate where when I asked him what got him interested in that particular role (a corporate IT gig) he shrugged his shoulders and said “I don’t know… it’s a job.” In the words of Tyra Banks, “I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you!!”

#44

Someone spelled their name wrong.

Mentioned wanting to make a career at xyz company- person applied to abc company.

#45

Work Experience: Moderator on Reddit

#46

* Their photo. I don’t need a picture of you, I’m hiring for an office job not a modeling or acting gig.

* Text speak. Don’t write “looking 4 a good career” or something. Use spellcheck/grammar check.

* Fake jobs or schools like “school of hard knocks” or “hustle industries, CEO” (I’ve seen both of these)

#47

I’m not an employer but my youngest sister wanted me to check over her first resume and she had put

“5’3
Brown hair
Brown eyes
Funny, charismatic, loves to cook”

I sat there laughing to myself pretty good and then let her know this isn’t a dating profile.

#48

Now this is going to come as a surprise to some, but your list of “diagnoses” and your previous work “trauma” might be a bit of a “red flag” to the company you are applying to.

#49

Unformatted resumé. Block of text. Opening statement as folows:

“I want job.”

To be fair, this was a job placement/school facility for those looking to grow their English skills and ability. The issue with this fella was that he refused help in building an appropriate North American resumé.

It’s difficult to send a resumé like that to clients, many of whom were/are international, and requiring a certain command of the English language.

#50

We had a young woman apply for an entry-level software engineering job a couple years ago that had a Linktree URL in her application and resume. One of my coworkers was doing resume evaluations for our boss and opened the Linktree, finding links to an R-rated Twitter account, a PG-13 Insta, her Onlyfans, and to her content on several other porn sites. My coworker and boss were not amused, and they were debating whether someone was trolling the company or if it was a bizarre spam attempt. Her resume was rejected, and she was sent an automated “Thank you, good luck in your search, please try again in the future” email.

A few months later, we were advertising another open entry-level position when her resume came through again. My boss was doing the resume evals and recognized the name. He opened it a second time, while commenting to another of my coworkers about the inappropriate resume (he’s not a perv, but was just surprised to see it again.) When my boss clicked the Linktree URL again to show the coworker, he was greeted with a perfectly normal collection of engineering links, including a link to her electronic resume, her LinkedIn, several projects she’d worked on, and a GitHub account.

Our best guess is that the applicant had accidentally copypasted the wrong Linktree URL the first time. She was still rejected for the second position. At that point, several employees had seen *everything*, and my boss decided that moving her resume forward for interviews would be inappropriate. Bit of a shame too. Solid GPA from a well-respected CS program, interesting projects, and a demonstrated ability to take on some absolutely massive workloads (sorry, I’m weak and couldn’t resist.)

When applying for a job, please don’t include links to your nudes. Aside from a handful of socially awkward software engineers, most of our people don’t want to see them.

/edit: Lots of people seem hung up on the fact that we passed her over the second time. Let’s clear a few things up.

1. There was nothing inappropriate about employees seeing her “material.” These weren’t private photos, and they weren’t shared without permission. It was content she had voluntarily posted online, was actively sharing with the world, and then shared directly with our company. We didn’t look it up. She sent it to us. There’s also nothing wrong with our manager sharing it with other senior employees who were involved in the hiring process. Nobody was ogling her because she was naked and pretty. The Internet is full of naked and pretty women, and we all know where to find it if that’s what we’re looking for. It was shared because it was a weird mistake to make on a resume. We thought it was *funny* to see porn in an application.

2. At the end of the day, she made an unprofessional mistake that cost her any chance at an interview. She wasn’t passed up because she was a sex worker. Our company leadership was fairly liberal and they wouldn’t have held it against her. What she did was the professional equivalent of a guy forgetting to zip his pants and having his d**k peek out while he walked in for his interview. Doesn’t matter that it was accidental. Doesn’t matter that it was embarrassing. It was unprofessional, and some things can’t be unseen. Dumb mistakes during the hiring process will keep you from being hired. She made a dumb mistake. It kept her from being hired. That’s just how the world works.

3. Several people seem to have misunderstood one of my comments. We didn’t realize that she’d probably made a mistake with the link until *after* she applied for the second position. When her first application was submitted and shared, we really didn’t know what to make of it. My boss thought it was some kind of joke, or some kind of spam account gone wrong. Nobody believed it was a serious application until *after* the second application was received a couple of months later. That’s when we put two and two together.

4. First impressions matter. A lot. When your first impression includes a link to a preview video of you riding a giant dildo, you cannot get mad when that’s something that people associate with you afterward. Whether she intended it or not, that was her first impression.

5. She’d have been blocked once HR learned of the nude links anyway. Hiring someone after you’d seen their nudes would have been a legal nightmare. If Applicant A sends nudes and is hired, and Applicant B doesn’t send nudes and is not hired, that would be a slam dunk sex discrimination case for Applicant B. How would the company prove that they *hadn’t* preferentially hired Applicant A because of the sexual material they’d provided?

#51

I interview programmers. I disregard those resumes that are like 75% just lists of technologies the person has used. I want to see what you did to solve a business need, not that you used AWS EC2 and AWS S3 and AWS RDS and AWS Lambda and AWS ELBs and AWS VPCs and AWS SQS and AWS Macie and AWS Cloudformation and Hashicorp Terraform and NodeJS and NPM and JavaScript and TypeScript and on and on and on, _especially_ because in my experience, nine out of ten times, if you choose a random technology from the list and ask them what exactly they did with it, it ends up being something like “I evaluated it for the project and could learn it if required.”

#52

When I worked at a hotel, applicants would cut in front of customers, or not care that i was on the phone, to ask for an application.

At least 90% also asked for a pen.

I’d always give them a pen, and not expect them to give it back (cheap hotel- branded ballponts), although it aggravated me that so many were unprepared. But if they were rude, I’d put a note on the application. Last thing any of us needed to deal with was complaints about rude employees.

They’d never get a call back if I made such a note. Just something for people to consider when they want to apply somewhere, especially when it’s a customer service job. Be thoughtful and respectful to whomever may be your future coworker.

#53

On more than one occasion, I got a resume (from the same person) for an entry-level position. The first time I got it, the resume (entry level position) was 5 pages long and a laundry list of every job the dude has ever held from high school forward.

What will forever stand out to me is his entry for when he worked at JC Penney. He put the job description as “helping customers find stuff”. Yes that’s technically the job, but “assisting customers with locating merchandise” sounds so much better on a resume.

#54

“Loves Hentai”

#55

Grammatical and/or spelling issues are a major red flag.

#56

Filling every gap between traditional corporate jobs with spurious claims to have been “consulting”.

#57

I’m a recruiter (mostly accounting and finance roles), and I probably look at 10 to 15 resumes a day.

Anyone who puts they are a member of Mensa or their IQ on their resume is a total tool. I’m like 20/20 on that in my career.

Several times, I’ve had a candidate include that they were looking for a “420 positive” work environment.

I see a ton of resumes these days where people are trying to signal their political affiliation, with phases like “staunchly conservative” and “socially progressive.”

The phrase “Dog Mom/Dad” on a resume means they will use more “emergency” PTO days than anyone who is an actual parent by a factor of at least two.

The resume being in a .doc format instead of .pdf is a bad sign. Over or under designed resumes are also a bad sign, I see a lot of resumes that a 2-3 prose paragraphs in 10 pt Arial, people also overdo it with proficiency scales, side panels, multiple text boxes, tons of colors, pictures, and even gifs.

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