'I've read over 40,000 résumés, and this is the biggest mistake job seekers make'

Rick Wilking/Reuters

When Tina Nicolai began working as a recruiter for Walt Disney World in the late 1990s, she noticed that many job seekers were submitting flawed résumés.

"I realized people simply did not know how to market themselves or their achievements," Nicolai tells Business Insider. "And that's how I knew there was a market to educate job candidates at all levels and in all industries."

In 2010 she founded Résumé Writers' Ink.

"Since launching my company, I've read over 40,000 résumés," she says. "And this is the biggest mistake job seekers make: They are sloppy. They pay poor attention to detail. They are lazy!"

Nicolai says she has seen too many résumés with typos, unprofessional fonts, outdated information, and irrelevant information.

"Another 'lazy' thing I see on résumés is when people start a bullet point with 'Responsible for,'" she says.

"Candidates need to understand that starting a sentence with 'responsible for' tells the reader what the job requirements were supposed to be, but it does not state that the candidate actually performed the functions," Nicolai says. "It does not state that the candidate was successful in these functions. Don't be lazy: Take the extra few minutes to explain what you accomplished — not what you were expected to accomplish."

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