• Put every keyword in your resume
• Show that you were an architect on all the positions
• Poorly articulate your experience in the interview
• Have inconsistencies in your resume
• Don't admit you don't know something

Put every keyword in your resume: There was a time when my client would look at the resume and say, "this one looks promising, you don't have to spend the whole hour with him. If you find out he is a good fit in the first 15 minutes, go ahead and hire him." After the interview, I would end up explaining to him how bad the candidate was for our position. After a while this became a routine and I started thinking, "I hope my client doesn't think I am intentionally not hiring any one!"

The point is, if you put something in your resume, you better be able to defend it. There was a candidate who said he didn't know any design patterns but he had listed a few in his resume. When I asked him about it, he got confused and said it should not have been there. Did the vendor put them there? I don't know.

Show that you were an architect on all the positions: If you have always been an architect, you probably have no coding experience and wouldn't make a good architect. Now, you may be listing only a subset of your projects but it doesn't make sense to list only architecture experience for a developer position.

Poorly articulate your experience in the interview: I have seen good candidates not articulating their experience very well. This could be due to nervousness but it also reflects poor communication skills - something IT projects can't afford especially if you are expected to participate in meetings and/or communicate with others on a regular basis. In response to "What is your experience with JMS?", I sometimes get, "Yeah I know JMS, there is a queue and there is a message and you can send the message through the queue." Or even worse, "Yeah I know JMS, Java Message Service." This response does not help me. 

And please don't ever say, "I don't know XYZ but I can pick it up very fast." If you don't know about something, how do you know you can pick it up quickly?

Have inconsistencies in your resume: You cannot have 2 years of experience in WebSphere 6.1 because it didn't exist 2 years ago - period.

Don't admit you don't know something: This one turns me off completely. In fact, this could turn any interviewer off easily. Once I asked a WebSphere administrator candidate how to start WebSphere Application Server in Linux or Unix environment. He said, he had only administered in windows environment. "Okay...how do you start WAS in windows environment?" I asked. He said, "through the start menu." I said you wouldn't have start menu available for a remote server. He said they used remote desktop. I was looking for the command line way to start the server so I asked him directly about the command line option. He went on to say there was always a way to start WAS without using command line and then he spent some time defending his position. The point in case is, it's OK to say, "I don't know."

Sarcasm aside, it's not too difficult not to make these mistakes. 

• Read the position description and think about the relevant experience BEFORE the interview
• Do some fact checking on the resume; inaccuracies go against both recruiter (is he manipulating the resume?) and candidate (is he lying on the resume?)
• Relax and make the interview conversational; bad interview doesn't mean you are a bad candidate, it just means you are not a good fit