Former Amazon Recruiter Reveals No. 1 Mistake Jobseekers Make In Resumes

A former Amazon recruiter, who spent two decades looking at "literally a million" resumes, has shared the one mistake jobseekers make in their cover letters which eventually leads to their rejection. Speaking to CNBC Make It, Lindsay Mustain, a former Talent Acquisition Strategist and Employer Branding Guru at Amazon, said that jobseekers provide generic statements that fail to give insights into what they actually accomplished on the job. She described them as "Miss America answers" or the ones she'd hear in a pageant, and said that this mistake is common "from junior level all the way up to the C-suite". 

Ms Mustain, now the CEO of career coaching company Talent Paradigm, advised job candidates to write about the "result of the work you do" and be specific when giving examples. She even recalled an instance in which forgetting that critical component could've cost job seekers an offer of seven figures. 

Speaking to CNBC Make It, Ms Mustain said that while she working at Amazon, an applicant messaged her on LinkedIn, saying that he had been applying to jobs at the company and no one was calling back. The man was a former Top Gun commander, a former White House aide to two presidents and a Harvard alumnus. "This might be the most qualified person I've ever heard," she said. 

But the problem with his resume, according to Ms Mustain was that he did not give insights into what he does. He didn't include his specific at-work accomplishments or the kinds of tasks he took on in previous jobs, she said. It wasn't clear that he had the experience Amazon needed for any role, Ms Mustain added. 

It was only after a phone call that Ms Mustain got a better sense of who he was as a worker. She eventually got in touch with him and he landed that seven-figure offer. 

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Further, speaking to CNBC, Ms Mustain shared tips on how to avoid writing "Miss American answers". She stated that jobseekers can quantify and list their accomplishments instead of writing "I had stakeholder meetings with people". She also said that such statements are "like a glorified job description" and look "like somebody who's filling a seat". 

According to Ms Mustain, adding more metrics and analytics to resumes makes it more impressive. This is because recruiters' eyes go straight to the numbers while going through hundreds of applications, she explained. She told the outlet that the resume should be "results-based", which will give recruiters a fair idea about how much value the particular individual added to their previous employer.