Ex-Amazon recruiter shares the no.1 mistake job seekers make in their resumes: 'Go straight to the...'

Lindsay Mustain has worked as a talent acquisition strategist with Amazon for more than a year at Seattle. (Image credit: LinkedIn)

Former Amazon recruiter Lindsay Mustain has spent about two decades in talent acquisition and has looked at “literally a million,” resumes. Speaking to CNBC Make It, she revealed the one mistake that she sees job seekers make again and again.

Lindsay Mustain calls it the “Miss America answers,” or remarks one expects in beauty pageants. The CEO of career coaching company Talent Paradigm said that these simple, generic statements don’t give much insight into the candidates' accomplishments.

It’s happening from the junior level “all the way up to the C-suite,” Mustain told the publication, adding that its preventing jobseekers from standing out.

“I had stakeholder meetings with people” is an example of a Miss America answer, Mustain said. They’re “like a glorified job description... adding that, you just look like somebody who’s filling a seat," she added.

Mustain recommended quantifying and listing the accomplishments instead of just describing your role and experience.

“If somebody is fixing tickets on a help desk,” she said, as an example, “I’ve solved 30 customers’ problems a day” is a good metric to start with. She added that candidates can take it even further, though, and think about what they were able to accomplish in a year. Thirty problems a day, 20 days a month, 12 months per year is 7,200 problems solved altogether.

The “more metrics and analytics you can add to your resume, the more impressive,” Mustain told the publication explaining that recruiters only have a few seconds to dedicate to your resume. They’re likely “handling somewhere between 15 to 25” job openings at once, the former Amazon recruiter added. “The average applicants per job is 250, which means they’re dealing with tens of thousands of applicants.”

Quantifying the accomplishments makes the recruiters’ eyes go straight to the numbers when they are reviewing. They’ll know how much value you added to your previous employers immediately, Mustain told CNBC Make It.

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