Everyone makes this critical resume mistake - Here's this LinkedIn expert's top tips to fix it

Searching for a new job can be stressful, but there’s one thing you have to do before you even start applying: build the perfect resume. LinkedIn career expert Andrew McCaskill sat down with TheStreet’s J.D. Durkin to go over the do’s and don’ts of resume building.

Full Video Transcript Below:

J.D. DURKIN: Talk to me about, you know, oftentimes before you even get into that door, it's based on what's off a piece of paper. It's based off your resume- do's and don'ts of resume building, I'd imagine avoid typos is probably somewhere on that list. But that in and of itself is a competitive field. Right? Hey, you've got your CV, I've got mine. And before they know anything else about us, it's just whatever's off the paper that shines through.

ANDREW MCCASKILL: Here's some things that I think are really important. One is the verbiage should be action oriented and results oriented. So no passive language in your resume and on your LinkedIn profile. It should be very skills first. Like these are the things that I do incredibly well. Here's how I've used those skills and here's the results that I've garnered for my company or my employer using those skills really, really well. 

The other thing goes back to that thing about the whole typo thing, man, it should be easy to read, it should be easy to follow. And there are tons of tools out there from AI, tools to proofreaders and all of that thing that you should not really have any sort of typos and big mistakes in your resume. One of the things that people are fearful of, though, is that what if I have a time gap on my resume? There's not the same stigma about having taken time off from work anymore. Don't try to hide that. Be really forthcoming about it. If you've had, if you took off time off to be a caregiver or if you took time off for mental health reasons, or if you took time off just to reassess or learn a new skill or to take a break. Right it's okay to have those gaps on there. Don't fudge them, be honest about them and upfront. Move the months around, OK? And then they look really weird because then the months are wrong on your resume or when you look at your LinkedIn or you forget the dates in your head like, listen, I think that being honest and forthcoming about that in the beginning, you'll be fine.