Potential employers may spend as little as six seconds looking at your resume to do an assessment of your skills and compare those skills to your job offer. In those six seconds they don’t read every word of the resume!

Instead, employers look at the general format: is it easy to read? Does this resume contain the information relevant to your particular field? Do the first few bullet points at the top of the resume match your job description? If any of these things don’t meet their criteria, they move your resume to the “bad pile.” Resumes in the bad pile are those resumes that will never be fully read and probably never looked at again.

Avoid these five resume red flags to ensure you stay out of the bad pile!

* Red Flag Number 1: CVs written in the third person.

Resumes should never be written in the third person. Use the first person and choose the present or past tense to show the most important information relevant to your work goals.

In the example below, you’ll see that a resume written in the third person doesn’t have the dynamic impact of a resume written in the first person:

Jane Doe is an excellent event manager and never went over budget.

The resume statement above does not use action verbs and is not a strong statement of Jane’s abilities. We know this resume is about Jane because her name is at the top of the document, so there’s no reason to keep using Jane’s name – we need to use that space to sell her skills to the prospective employer!

A stronger, more relevant resume statement would start with a strong action verb:

Managed numerous large and small events, always within budget.

* Red Flag Number 2: CVs that have no visual appeal.

If your resume isn’t visually appealing, it will turn the potential reader away right away. No one wants to read a resume that is formatted in fine print and no blank spaces! White space allows the eye to rest between reading and absorbing the content and acts as a clue to important information that the employer should read carefully.

At the same time, a resume with too many blank spaces will make it seem like you don’t have any relevant experience or skills to offer to the employer. Find a happy medium: keep the resume legible and clean while filling in the blank.

* Red Flag Number 3: CVs written in an inappropriate format.

Never write your resume in complete sentences! There is a format and style to resumes and curriculum vitae (CV) that is different from other genres of writing. The resume should be written in such a way that anyone who picks it up and looks at it knows that it is a resume.

This is not to say that you label the document SUMMARY at the top of the page! Instead, you should use effective formats and the common language of your field to state your knowledge in a way that’s immediately recognizable as a resume.

* Red Flag Number 4: CVs that do not have an adequate length.

Employers and recruiters are busy people and expect to read a certain amount of content depending on the type of job they are hiring for. For example, they don’t want to read a four-page resume from a recent graduate with no work experience.

The appropriate length for resumes and CVs is based on depth of experience, knowledge, and current job goals. A new college graduate will not have the same resume as a seasoned executive. And none of those resumes will be similar to the CV used by those in the academic and scientific fields.

The standard resume length is one page, but don’t feel limited to that requirement. If you have years of relevant industry experience, you’ll want to use a full two pages. You can even use three if you have more than a decade of experience and are looking for a high-level executive position.

* Red Flag Number 5: Resumes that have not been edited for grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Those kinds of mistakes can get even the most qualified job candidate thrown into that bad pile of resumes, completely out of consideration for a position. Remember, a resume is a great way to show an employer or recruiter how hard you are willing to work. If you haven’t edited your resume thoroughly, people reading it may think you won’t try hard enough in the actual job role.

After reviewing your resume carefully, ask a friend or two to review it again for you.