5 Common CV Mistakes – By understanding these we can reduce the amount of second-guessing that goes on and makes CV writing stressful .and tedious.
The 5 common CV mistakes listed below are in no particular order. We all do things slightly differently and have a varied career history and are more, or less, familiar with current CV practice. You may already be aware of some of these issues, but by correcting just one, you could possibly make your CV far more effective.
5 Common CV Mistakes No. 1 – Thinking it’s all about you.
It is likely that those of you who have held one job for a long time, or are fairly new to the job market, are more likely to make this error.
Actually, your CV is not your complete work or life history where you write something like a biography. It should be a document that demonstrates what you have that would be of interest to the employer.
It is so easy to put ourselves at the centre of the CV instead of making it easy and clear for the reader. This means a recruiter will have to wade through untargeted and possibly self-indulgent information to get to the facts they are looking for. Well, they won’t bother. They will lose interest almost immediately (in less than 30 seconds)!.
This is true for so many areas of communication and not just your CV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6BmurUpiN0
5 Common CV Mistakes No. 2 – Writing you CV before you know what job you want
Because a CV is such a tangible symbol of our ability to apply for jobs it is often the first task we want to complete in order to feel we are making progress. This works really well when we are thinking about changing jobs in our own time, but if the need for a new job has arisen fairly quickly, say, through redundancy or cultural upheaval etc, we may well not be clear on our next move.
When this happens, the urge to take immediate action often drives us to focus on our CVs when we should be stepping back and thinking about what we want first. See workshop Job Search Techniques 2 – Identifying Your New Role
I have said many time in various articles and workshop, that our CV is our marketing document, and we never write marketing documentation until we know what the market is looking for! In this way it is possible to really focus on what we have that will capture the market’s interest, and therefore write a CV that creates interest in the readers and leads to interviews.
5 Common CV Mistakes No. 3 – Simply adding your most recent role to the top of your CV
Again, this is a common mistake, but one that is mostly make by those who have not had many jobs or have not been in the job market for several years.
We understand that a CV should usually be short and concise so that the reader can find the information they want quickly. However, alongside this, recruiters are much more interested in what we have done recently that years ago.
This means we need to reduce the amount of early career information we leave on our CVs and leave room to provide through and somewhat detailed information about our most recent roles (so long as it is relevant to what we want to do next).
5 Common CV Mistakes No. 4 – Writing about things in general rather than being specific
Perhaps one of the most common errors we make, partly because what the recruiters are looking for has changed recently. It is no longer good enough to say what your responsibilities were, or what you can do.
You will create a CV with far more impact by writing in achievement based language -what you have done (specifically). For example you might say you are responsible for resolving customer issues; this may be true but doesn’t leave the reader with any real image. of what you were doing.
Here’s the thing, your CV needs to create a picture in the readers mind. That is partly why we are for examples during an interview, so we can imagine more accurately what you do.
A more specific statement for the above could be: Resolved in excess of 250 IT issues for customers during a national systems update spanning 2 days. Do you get the picture now?!
5 Common CV Mistakes No. 5 – Not changing your language to suit the job
If you don’t do this your CV is unlikely to be seen!
Almost without fail, you CV will be going onto a database when you apply for a job. It is then subject to an Automated Tracking System (ATS), which meant the database is subjected to a key word search and all the CV with the right key words are pulled out for the recruiter to see.
http://how-to-beat-the-applicant-tracking-system
So make sure you do your research and keep updating your CV to match the language the job advert or description is using