By now we all know that spelling mistakes and bad grammar will see your CV instantly rejected.
But what about the lesser known CV blunders that drive employers crazy and keep your name out of the shortlist?
If you want to land more job interviews, then make sure your CV doesn’t contain any of these common but unreported mistakes.
Unprofessional email addresses
You need to look professional when applying for jobs, so it’s not a great idea to brand the top of your CV with an email address like “[email protected]”.
If you have an email address that seemed really cool when you were in school but now leaves you slightly embarrassed; set up a new one for your job hunting efforts.
Poor file naming
Your CV filename will be highly visible to recruiters in emails; so it needs to look professional.
Saving your CV with a file name like “Dave’s first CV draft 555” does not create the impression of a polished, reliable candidate.
Sure this may not always be a deal breaker, but it looks very sloppy and will cause recruiters to doubt you.
Too many personal details
Recruiters do not need to know your full address and date of birth to decide whether to interview you or not.
Including too many personal details takes up a lot of space on your CV, so cut them down and focus on including compelling evidence of your value as an employee.
Not researching employer’s needs
One of the worst errors that job hunters make is failing to research their target employers before they write their CV.
If your CV doesn’t include the skills that employers require for their roles, they will not hire you – it’s that simple.
Before crafting your CV; browse through some relevant job adverts and take note of the most important candidate requirements to include in your CV
Key word stuffing
Ever since the use of CV scanning software became common knowledge; candidates have been attempting to “trick the computers” by repeatedly cramming relevant buzzwords in their CV.
However, this method will backfire as soon as your CV reaches a human reviewer, because it will appear unnatural and recruiters will quickly figure out what’s going on
Write your CV to impress humans firstly and maybe tweak it afterwards to make sure that you are including key words once.
Sending in a non-editable format
Recruiters sometimes need to make quick edits to your CV before sending them on to hiring managers – e.g. moving the content into a company-standard format or removing contact details.
If your CV is in a non-editable format, then recruiters will need to contact you and ask for an editable version before they can get started.
This can slow the process down hugely and will allow other candidates to beat you to the post.
Including salary requirements
Adding salary requirements to your CV is not only unnecessary and a little premature, but it also hurts your negotiating power when it comes to offer stage.
You should always look to determine the maximum budget for the role before revealing your hand when it comes to remuneration.
If an employer is willing to pay £25K for their role, but your CV has already told them that you will accept £20K – then they are very unlikely to offer more than £20K.
Andrew Fennell is an experienced recruiter, writer for Assignyourwriter UK, founder of CV writing service StandOut CV and author of How to write a CV – The Ultimate Guide