Here’s the BIGGEST Mistake Found on Resumes!
About this video
Jeff Su says the most common resume mistake, universally agreed on by recruiters and hiring managers, is bullet points that describe what a candidate did instead of quantifying their impact. Metrics do not need to be large — they just need to be relevant and answer how many, how often, or how long. He walks through examples from a candidate named Joanna. A weak bullet, ‘supervised a website renovation project,’ becomes a claim of a 15% increase in page views and a 23% increase in session duration after helping launch a new website, using numbers she obtained from the IT team. Another vague bullet about fostering community becomes initiating and leading 12 lunch-and-learns, helping prepare five training sessions, and receiving 100% positive feedback. He recommends Google’s XYZ structure: Accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z. For roles without obvious metrics, he shares a ChatGPT or Google Bard prompt casting the AI as an expert resume writer with over 20 years of experience and asking it to list five relevant metrics from a description of responsibilities, demonstrating it on extreme cases like caring for a sick family member for a year and a sophomore student with no work experience seeking an internship.
Key takeaways
- The biggest resume mistake is describing duties instead of quantifying impact
- A valid metric answers how many, how often, or how long — it does not need to be large
- Use Google’s XYZ formula: Accomplished X as measured by Y by doing Z
- Ask colleagues or teams like IT for numbers you tracked indirectly, such as page views
- Use the shared AI prompt to generate five relevant metrics for any role
Episode details: published September 19, 2023 · 6:05 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Jeff Su’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.
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