CV Write

Professional, high impact CV writing that generates interviews.

Category Archives: Common CV Mistakes

Reasons for Leaving

We often see CVs where people have put down their reasons for leaving against each of their jobs.

This is generally unnecessary and can be counter-productive.

During an interview one of the main conversation points is going to be the reasons behind your career moves and if it’s all written down then you’ll have nothing to discuss!

If you’ve been made redundant from your last 2/3/4 roles, then writing this down may actually prevent you getting an interview in the first place.

Remember, a CV is designed to get you an interview so you must avoid giving the reader any reason for not seeing you.

Spelling Mistakes

Latest 3 CV spelling mistakes are errors that just don’t get picked up by spell checkers:

Roll instead of Role

Manger instead of Manager

Collage instead of College

If you do nothing else with your CV – get someone else to proof read it.

 

Templates

There are many CV templates and free examples available that look good, but you need a combination of both style and substance for a really professional Curriculum Vitae.

A template is good for getting the look and layout of a CV correct but that’s about as far as it goes.

An employer or recruiter needs to be able to quickly read a CV and ascertain if you’re worth interviewing. Whilst a template will help you along the road it doesn’t help with writing compelling content that really gets you onto the interview list.

If we write your new CV then you will have a document that really sells you and  gets you the interview.

Click on our free review to see what we mean - with no obligation. 

Contact Details

Such a “comedy basic” – but make sure you have all your contact details on your CV.

We see so many that are missing either a mobile number or an email address. You must have both on a CV or you are just making the recruiters job harder, and if you do that – guess what? That’s right, they contact someone else.

Make sure you have the following on the top of your CV:

  • Full postal address
  • Mobile phone number
  • E-mail address

Be Positive!

Employers look for positive language in a CV.

Sounds obvious but the number of CVs we see that use weak language is incredible.

What do we mean by “Positive Language”?

Perhaps the most common example is when applicants say in their profile “I consider myself to be a hard working person” or “I can consider myself to be a reliable employee”.

This is weak language for a CV.

It’s much better to say “I am a hard working person” or “I am a reliable employee”.

It’s the same thing but so much stronger and positive in the way you portray yourself.

Age on a CV

You don’t need to put your age on a CV and recruiters and employers are not allowed to directly ask you how old you are.

It would be naive to think that your age doesn’t make a difference as many recruiters are under 30 and to them anyone over the age of 50 is not a good candidate.

But how do you avoid showing your age?

1. Don’t put your date of birth on.

Obvious but we still had to say it!

2. Only show the last 15-20 years of employment history on your CV.

You don’t have to show your entire life history in a CV and if the last 15-20 years doesn’t include any relevant experience then you probably shouldn’t be applying for the job in the first place!

3. If your email address was generated by your email provider it may well have your year of birth in it, e.g. davidsmith52@blahblah.com 

Get yourself a new email address specifically for job applications from Gmail or Yahoo.

4. Take out the years for your training and education.

Training is training, no matter when you did it and the same applies for education. There are exceptions to this but with many time related certifications the re-application process is pretty basic and employers won’t hesitate to get you through it if they think you’re the right person.

5. Take a careful look at your interests and hobbies…

If you put down that “spending time with my grand children” is an interest then you are giving away your age.

 

Follow these 5 steps and you’ll get past the age barrier and get the interview.

CV File Format

The vast majority of CVs we see are in Microsoft Word and with good reason – it’s the #1 word processing package in the world.

As a consequence most recruitment agencies and employers use it as standard and all of their systems are geared around it, and if you use another file format then you may run into problems.

There are 2 main reasons for this:

Firstly, they may not be able to open the file. This applies to Microsoft Works files that are used on many home PCs and have the file extension “.wps” and to OpenOffice files with the file extension “.odt”. Most companies just don’t have this software and will not be able to see your CV.

Secondly, many agencies use what is called parsing software which automatically reads your CV and puts the information into a database. Generally speaking this software is only set up for Word documents and will not read other formats – even Adobe PDF. file – so your CV won’t get onto the database.

Solution:-

Use Microsoft Word!

If you only have MS Works or Open Office you can get around this issue by saving the file using the “Save As” option and selecting the option to save as a Word Document.

Spelling Mistakes

We’re suddenly seeing a rash of spelling errors in CVs, perhaps because people are updating their CV and rushing through it when they really need to take their time and get someone else to proof read it.

This morning we have seen “mouths” instead of “months” and “collage” instead of “college”.

Neither of these will be picked up by spell checkers, but anyone from a potential employer or recruitment agency will spot them straight away. This type of error will immediately push your application down the pecking order or even into the dreaded “round file”.

Get someone else to read your CV before you send it anywhere.