Ex-Amazon HR manager reveals the most shocking thing she saw on a resume: 'It just blew us away'

Lindsay Mustain worked with Amazon for about one and a half years recruiting senior talent to work at Amazon Corporate.

A former HR manager with about 20 years of experience in recruiting who has also worked with Amazon recently spoke about the most shocking thing she ever saw in a resume. Lindsay Mustain has hired 10,343 employees and reviewed over 1,000,000 resumes but one resume that she came across in 2007 still haunts her.

Mustain was working with Comcast at the time. She was looking for a candidate to fill a fairly entry-level call center role. As she was sifting through resumes, one in particular caught her eye. “I honestly have no idea what he was doing,” the former Amazon recruiter and now CEO of talent development company Talent Paradigm told CNBC Make It. It “shocked me.”

She said that although the first two pages of the candidate’s resume were pretty standard, the third page took her by surprise. “The very last page was a picture, a full-blown picture of him holding a shotgun,” Mustain said.

She added that the photo looked like an old-school selfie. Although it had the candidate holding the gun without pointing it at the camera, Mustain still thought, “What would go through your mind to think that this is an acceptable piece?”

“It just blew us away,” she told the publication.

Mustain then proceeded to share a couple of resume-writing tips for job seekers. Number 1, stick to two pages. “Two pages is the right number,” she said because recruiters would take the time to look through them.

Second, “Unless you’re a model or a real estate agent, I recommend you not put a photo on your resume,” she added. And never use firearms in the picture. It's extremely off-putting, Mustain said. “Honestly with a person like that,” she said, “I would not want to be associated with him because they feel like they’re a danger.”

Even if you’re applying for a job in which you’d be expected to use a firearm, most employers will want proof of training on it, not a photo of you holding it, the former Amazon recruiter added.

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