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Avoid Six common CV mistakes

It is not unusual for many job applicants with desired skills, qualifications and experience to not even be called for an interview just because their CV wasn’t good enough. And this problem is not limited to newbies, sometimes even experienced people don’t pay enough attention to their CV and later wonder why an employer or recruitment agency hasn’t called them up. In this article, you will learn some of the common mistakes that job seekers make while preparing their CV so that you can avoid them in future:

1. Presentation

Out of many CVs that an employer or recruiter gets, the ones that stand out from the rest are often those with attractive borders, photographs or big fonts. You can use them to catch the attention but don’t overdo it as too much use of big fonts will leave a bad impression and too small fonts are tough to read. A employer or a recruiter often first skims through a CV before reading it thoroughly so make sure you have used bold, italics at right places.

2. Language

Irrespective of if you have a degree in English literature or you are only a high school graduate, it is pertinent that you double check your CV for any grammar or spelling mistakes. It is not uncommon for errors to unintentionally slip in.

3. Length

If you CV is too short employers may reject it thinking you are a part of the lazy brigade. On the other hand if it’s too long they may not read it completely and thus many of your achievements may go unnoticed. Two to three pages is nether too long nor too small.

4. Structure

To make it easy to appraise, it is a good idea to have your CV divided into sections like qualifications, employment, education, additional information etc. It makes a good impression when you have a paragraph at the top summarizing the whole CV. This is what a recruiter sees first and a lot depends on this summary.

5. Content

All that you read above may come to naught if the content is not good, after it’s content that matters the most. That’s not to say you can write it like a story, it has to be presented in a right matter so that a recruiter at the very least reads it. You can use bullet points and higher fonts to highlight the most important parts of your CV.

6. Don’t adopt the ‘one-for-all’ approach

A CV that worked last time may not get you the interview call the next time. Therefore it’s important that you pay attention to the job advertisement and then adapt your CV accordingly. That dramatically increases the chances of an employer phoning you.