What Do Employers Really Want on Your Resume?

According to a new CareerBuilder survey, more than 3 in 4 HR managers (77 percent) report having caught a lie on a resume, and, in addition to embellishments, CareerBuilder’s survey reveals other outlandish and costly mistakes candidates have made.

Candidates’ stress isn’t coming out of nowhere, the survey suggests. Among human resource managers, who are typically on the front lines and gatekeepers of which applicants get in front of the actual hiring managers, more than 2 in 5 (43 percent) said they spend less than a minute looking at a resume. Nearly 1 in 4 (24 percent) spend less than 30 seconds.

The pressure to make a good first impression is on, and because of that, some candidates are making critical blunders in their effort to get noticed.

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HR managers and hiring managers shared their most notable and cringe-worthy real-life examples of gaffes found on a resume:

• An applicant’s name was auto-corrected from “Flin” to “Flintstone.” His name was Freddie.
• An applicant stated they had great attention to detail, but “attention” was misspelled.
• An applicant claimed they worked at a federal prison. A background check determined he was actually incarcerated at the prison during that time.
• An applicant stated they had been a prince in another life.
• An applicant listed a skill as “taking long walks.”
• An applicant used direct quotes from Star Wars in their resume.
• An applicant claimed he would work harder if paid more.
• An applicant wrote the following at the end of their resume: “I didn’t really fill this out, someone did it for me.”
• An applicant used a resume template with cats in the corners.
• An applicant listed smoking under hobbies.

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What Do Employers Really Want?

It is important to catch the eye of a human resource manager, but for the right reasons. Here are five things that HR managers say make them more likely to pay attention to an application:

• Resume has been customized to their open position: 63 percent
• Skill sets are listed first on the resume: 41 percent
• A cover letter is included with the resume: 40 percent
• Application that is addressed to the specific hiring manager: 22 percent
• Resume that includes a link to a candidate’s blog, portfolio or website: 16 percent

This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder among 2,153 hiring and human resource managers ages 18 and over, including 251 HR managers (employed full-time, not self-employed, non-government) between May 11 and June 7, 2016. The survey findings were released Thursday.

CareerBuilder offers HR software as a service to help companies in the recruitment process from acquire to hire.

CareerBuilder works with top employers across industries, providing job distribution, sourcing, workflow, CRM, data and analytics in one pre-hire platform. It also operates leading job sites around the world.

Owned by TEGNA Inc. (NYSE: TGNA), Tribune Media (NYSE: TRCO) and McClatchy (NYSE: MNI), CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the United States, Europe, South America, Canada and Asia.