I received this in a resume recently - "Summary: I am a graduate student in computer engineering. I finished a project recently in ASP.net. I am also currently working on a website with Perl and Mac OSX. I am also a part-time computer technician. Therefore, I can do most jobs in the IT industry."
When you write the summary for your CV or resume you have to realize one thing. You are trying to grab attention and keep it. When I started in this industry I was told that hiring managers read resumes for an average of 8 seconds. At first I didn't believe it but now I think it is actually shorter. Why? Because of the way people read. They start at the top and read until they get bored. If they have 20 Resumes to read and you don't grab their attention early in the CV they WON'T KEEP READING! That's how that 8 seconds comes about. They are looking for things of interest and if they find something they keep reading, if they don't....
So what is the classic mistake above? A claim that is blatantly impossible to prove. There is no way you can prove you "can do most jobs in the IT industry". I think the moment you make a claim that any experienced hiring manager is going to find hard to believe you will turn them off. And what do I or hiring managers do when we see something like that, we just go and read the next resume. Or in my case, pick up the phone and find a better candidate.
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