CV Howlers: What NOT to write on your CV – THE RESULTS
MD of Personal Career Management Corinne Mills has completed a CV survey and has found that over 90% of CV’s…
Article by:Corinne Mills
MD of Personal Career Management Corinne Mills has completed a CV survey and has found that over 90% of CV’s had an error due to spelling, grammar or format and 25% of the CV’s were badly presented.
See below some of the alarming disclosures found when crawling through the CV’s –
“A director with a strong breath”
“Baker, working on ovens and customers”
“I’m looking manly for an IT role”
“Brought in by American company to take control of the UK”
What was more surprising was that most of these CV’s were not junior applicants, but CEO’s, senior professionals and recent graduates.
With today’s tough job market it is more important than ever to ensure you have an error free CV and that it shows you are capable of doing the job.
Here are the statistics from our CV survey:
Statistics | Number | % of total |
Total number of CVs reviewed | 500 | |
CVs with errors due to spelling, grammar or format | 462 | 92% |
Spelling only | 14 | 3% |
Grammar only | 199 | 40% |
Format only | 64 | 13% |
Spelling and grammar | 25 | 5% |
Grammar and formatting | 97 | 19% |
Spelling and formatting | 4 | 1% |
All three | 19 | 4% |
Format too long | 40 | 8% |
Number of pages per CV | ||
1 | 5 | 1% |
2 | 164 | 33% |
3 | 208 | 42% |
4 | 79 | 16% |
more than 4 | 43 | 9% |
Longest CV | 11 pages | |
(Correct number of pages for a CV is 2) | ||
Choosing to give date of birth | 139 | 28% |
Choosing to give family details e.g married with children | 137 | 27% |
Choosing to give nationality | 130 | 26% |
Examples of most common mistakes
- Tenses: switching
from present to past and vice versa for no reason or just bad use. E.g. “I have
ran the London Marathon” - Apostrophes:
“Tesco’s”, “saving 100,000’s of dollars”, “KPI’s”, “it’s” instead of “its” - Ellipses in all
their forms. Misuse and “..” - Capitalising random
words mid-sentence - Variations in page
margins or text alignment
Caps:
- “which encompasses
Travel and transport” - “…and pitch
capabilities, Implemented a highly effective…” - “I Initiated”
- “all Rooms”
- “revamped all food
and Beverage”
Formatting:
- Bad spacing, e.g.
“to Ore , 134km long”, “9staff” - Change in font and
font size - Switching between
“and” and “&” - Section headers at
the very bottom of pages with section content overleaf very common. - Mixed styles of
bullet points / erratic alignment - Lack of consistency
formatting dates, switching from full dates to abbreviations and, within
abbreviations, switching between /, ., – and ~
Corinne Mills has relaunched her CV book ‘You’re Hired! How to write a brilliant CV’ which you can purchase from Amazon. Her updated book includes a new chapter on looking at how to maximize the benefits of LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels.
Corinne works with individuals on a 1-1 basis providing career coaching and outplacement services helping job seekers to establish what their next career move should be and supports them in their job search.
For more information on our CV survey or to find out about our CV writing services please call Personal Career Management on 01753 888995 or fill in our online contact form.
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