Job inter­views are about step­ping into the unknown: you won’t know if you’ll get along with the hir­ing man­ag­er, or the kind of curve­ball ques­tions you might get hit with.

But you could be ruin­ing your chances before you even land the inter­view.

If you’re job-hunt­ing, a spokesper­son from jobs site Seek reveals some pet hates of recruiters and hir­ing man­agers that you need to know about before you sub­mit that job appli­ca­tion:

1. Don’t have gaps in your work history

These black holes will make your boss ques­tion what you’re hid­ing, said the spokesper­son.

“You may have tak­en time off work to trav­el or have a fam­i­ly, but leav­ing large peri­ods of time unac­count­ed for can leave recruiters and employ­ers won­der­ing what you were up to. 

“Instead of wait­ing for the inter­view­er to ques­tion you about it, be upfront and hon­est with them!”

2. Resumes that go on forever

When it comes to your resume, the advice is to keep it short and sweet.

“If there are 100 oth­er peo­ple vying for the job you’ve applied for, sub­mit­ting a con­cise, two-page resume – rather than a long-wind­ed four-page resume – is going to help you attract the atten­tion of time-poor employ­ers.”

3. Choking your resume with jargon

There are some words you need to delete from your resume imme­di­ate­ly, like ‘enthu­si­as­tic’ and ‘peo­ple per­son’ – and it’s a sure­fire way to turn off a poten­tial employ­er, or their assis­tant.

“Includ­ing indus­try jar­gon and buzz­words that real­ly don’t mean all that much on your resume. You nev­er know who may end up read­ing over your resume,” the spokesper­son said.

“It could be a per­son­al assis­tant assigned the task of cre­at­ing a short­list or a recruiter unfa­mil­iar with your cur­rent indus­try.”

4. Sending an inappropriate profile picture

Unless they specif­i­cal­ly request a pho­to, your first mis­take is send­ing an image at all.

“It does­n’t help to demon­strate your skills and pro­fi­cien­cies. If you’re going to send one, make sure it isn’t a self­ie or pho­to from a par­ty – this hap­pens more often than you think!”

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