A recruiter skimming a stack of applications spends seconds, not minutes, on a first pass. The mistakes that sink a resume at that stage are rarely about a candidate's actual experience. They're about the document failing to communicate that experience clearly and safely. Here are the five we see most often.
1. Spelling and grammar errors
This is the most common mistake, and the one most people treat as an afterthought: a red squiggly underline, not a real check. One typo in the first two lines can end the read right there, especially for detail-sensitive roles. Two things a generic spell-checker misses: proper nouns (your own past employers and product names shouldn't get flagged as errors) and consistency (pick "e-mail" or "email" and stick with it everywhere, not both).
2. Missing or malformed contact information
An absent email or phone number isn't a minor omission, it's a blocking one, because there's no way to recover from it once the resume is in a pile. Contact details need to be validated for correct format, a real email pattern, a real phone pattern, not just present. Treat this as an error the document can't ship with, not a nice-to-have.
3. Passive language instead of action words
Passive voice hides who did the work, which is the one thing a resume exists to establish.
4. Poor organization: not skimmable in ten seconds
A resume gets read by a human skimming quickly and, often, a parser scanning for structure, at the same time. That means: consistent section headings using conventional names (Experience, Education, Skills, not something creative), consistent formatting within and across entries (same date format, same punctuation policy, same field order), and reverse-chronological order within every section. Inconsistency doesn't just look sloppy. It slows down exactly the reader you need to move fast.
5. No demonstrated results
A duty statement says what the job was. A result says what changed because you did it, and that's the difference a recruiter is actually scanning for.