This paper seeks to highlight some of the grave mistakes you must guard against when writing your CV. Below is a host of factors among other factors that you need to guard against when writing your CV.
- Vagueness
A winning CV must be devoid of ambiguous statements. Such people write long winding sentences that do not mean anything. Whatever you write on your CV must be specific and to the point. A CV must not be generic and it must be tailor-made in such a way that the duties and responsibilities put on the CV speaks to the vacancy in question.
- Verbosity
Some job seekers are misguided and misdirected to the extent of thinking that using flowery language makes their CVs more appealing than their competitors. Instead of earning you more marks such kind of heavy vocabulary puts off the recruiters. Please note that recruiters do not have the time.
Advertisment
- Lack of Chronology
A CV must be written in such a way that it flows in terms of the years you have been working and it must start with your current employer and for each particular employer, you must indicate clearly your major duties and responsibilities. Unfortunately, some job seekers leave it to the recruiter to guess what their duties were and are. If your CV is written in a haphazard manner it gives the impression that you are the most disorganised person.
- Avoid Over Glorification of your CV
“I am the most sought after Marketing Manager in the Industry currently”. Such a claim is too superficial and it lacks practical substance. If you write such a statement you are portraying yourself as someone with a self-inflated ego. You create the impression that you are indispensable yet no one is indispensable. Please note that such an exaggeration does not entice the recruiters to shortlist you. By making such outrageous and unsubstantiated claims you force recruiters to ignore your CV.
- Avoid using a ridiculous email address.
Some job seekers use emails that smacks of unprofessionalism like badgirls@gmail.com. What this email implies at face value is that the CV bearer is someone not professional and lacks business ethics. Surely if you use such email recruiters do not take you as a serious job seeker.
- Avoid putting duties that do not show how you are going to add value to your employer.
When writing a CV you need to go the extra mile and indicate the ultimate impact of your duties and responsibilities. For example do not write: ‘Grow revenue”. You need to elaborate and show your impact and say grew regional and local revenue by 40% and 60% respectively. However, it is not possible to do so for all your duties but at least make the majority of your duties impact-oriented. The addition of numbers/figures is the most surest way to make your duties impactful.
Newturn Wikirefu is the Talent Acquisition Manager at Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting firm.
Phone +263 4 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number +0784 597343 or email: newturn@ipcconsultants.com or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com