Your average recruiter will sift through thousands of CVs every month, spending just a few seconds with each. With such competition, an otherwise good CV can find itself in the rejection pile for mistakes that can be easily avoided.
This CV has poor font choice and a disjointed layout, making it difficult to read.
A poorly-designed CV is one of the biggest mistakes job applicants make. Your layout, formatting, and font should enhance the clarity of your CV and not work against you.
Single page CV
An impactful, single-page CV does far more than two pages filled with fluffy writing. At this stage of the recruitment process, conciseness is king. Recruiters are typically looking for specific skills and experience. They don’t have time to read a CV the length of a novel to check that you have the relevant skills.
The right font
As much as Brush Script captures your personality, it’s not suitable for a CV. A poorly chosen font is a red flag to a recruiter. It shows you have not considered their end of things and has derailed more than a few good applications over the years.
Specifically, avoid these fonts:
Instead, choose typefaces that are legible and professional:
This CV has spelling mistakes and unnecessary apostrophes.
A study conducted in 2019 (Adzuna.co.uk) found that the vast majority of CVs contain both spelling and grammar errors. Only 1,134 out of the 20,000 resumes analysed were free of mistakes and more than 12,000 had more than five errors.
Glaring errors come across as amateur and give recruiters the impression that you lack attention to detail. While we all fall afoul of the spellchecker from time to time, when it comes to your CV, you want things to be perfect. This means using your word processor’s built-in spelling and grammar checker as well as conducting your own proofreading.
Apostrophes
One of the most common mistakes is the inclusion of unnecessary apostrophes. An apostrophe is used to indicate possession but is often found in CVs used in unusual ways.
Spelling errors
While your spellchecker may catch obvious mistakes, it won’t catch everything, especially similar sounding, valid words. Look out for the following frequent errors:
Malapropisms
Your spelling and grammar checks may also overlook word misuse. Be wary of yourself making these mistakes:
Exaggerating your career roles and stretching the truth will do more harm than good.
Whether you’re simply embellishing the truth a little or completely misrepresenting yourself, an inaccurate CV is both unethical and is potentially disastrous for your career. Assuming you do get the position based on false information, the gap between where you said you were in your career and where you actually are will grow wider. You may find yourself unable to complete tasks and deliver to the level you said you could.
Deception
Pushing people to lie on their CV is the idea that everyone else is doing the same thing. Getting a job can be a difficult process and people feel that if they don’t at least exaggerate their accomplishments they are putting themselves at a disadvantage.
Sticking to the truth will ensure you are employed based on your own skillset, not a false one. This will mean your employer will know what to expect and can offer learning opportunities too. Bigger lies such as made-up employers and elaborate job titles are also routinely scanned out early during the application process for bigger companies anyway. You won’t hear anything back and you may gain a negative reputation.
The most common “deviations from the truth” include:
Overstating
From the recruiter’s perspective, exaggeration is widespread and to be expected. People are looking to highlight their achievements and their CV is a chance to make themselves stand out. The problem comes in drawing a line between exaggeration and deception. Too little information and your CV looks lacking. Too much overstatement and it will appear disingenuous.
Being dishonest with your CV is not worth it. Hiring managers are not stupid and are skilled at testing your knowledge. Instead, honesty really is the best policy. While you may think a recruiter wants to hear how you have the ambition of becoming the company CEO, most would rather hear a genuine answer. You might not currently be interested in climbing the corporate ladder, for example, and, instead, want to see what opportunities this role would lead to.
Recruiters will only look at your CV for a few seconds, only include what’s important.
Most people make a single CV and then proceed to use this to apply for several different positions. While your core key skillset, education, and career aren’t changing between applications, tailoring your CV means putting the relevant skills front and centre.
The difference between a tailored resume and an all-purpose one is that the former will allow a recruiter to quickly identify your suitability for the position. It is useful for both human recruiters and automatic stages of the application process, such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) that are used by the majority of the world’s biggest companies to filter out CVs.
>> How to write a CV for a Part Time Job
Job description
Both ATS systems and recruiters will consider the relevancy of your CV based on the position’s job description.
Matching skills and keywords from the job description in your CV is a surefire way to score highly in this early recruitment stage. Mirroring the language and common word use of the job description will be a green light for the recruiter.
Read through your CV line by line
This will often mean picking your CV apart, line by line, word by word, and ensuring it includes mention of as many of the skills and responsibilities required for the position as possible.
Skills
Your skills and accomplishments are one thing, but showing you know how to use them is another. Try and find ways in your CV to show how you’ve used your skillset to achieve goals, therefore. Give real examples of how your skills landed a specific contract, saved time, made more money, or fostered company growth.
Aside from these four major CV faux pas, there are some other mistakes that can be easily avoided:
Read more: CV Guidance & Help
How to Write a CV for Part-Time Work
Why is Work Experience Important for a CV?
How to Put a QR Code on your CV
How to write a CV with little experience
