Five CV Mistakes And How To Fix Them

I know you will probably be thinking i love to write about CVs but i find it bad that most employees still make some preventable mistakes in their resumes

Mistake #1: Typos
We know—you’ve heard it. But even though this is obvious, it happens again and again. A 2013 CareerBuilder survey found that 58% of resumes have typos.


The Fix
Have someone else read your resume—often, other people can more easily spot errors because they haven’t been staring at the page for hours. Finally, once you’ve reviewed it, stop making those final tiny changes. People who tweak their resumes the most carefully can be especially vulnerable to this kind of error, because the mistakes often result from going back again and again to fine tune your resume just one last time. And in doing so, a subject and verb suddenly don’t match up, or a period is left in the wrong place, or a set of dates gets knocked out of orientation.

Mistake #2: Length
One good rule of thumb is one page of resume for every 10 years of work experience. A crisp, focused resume demonstrates an ability to synthesize, prioritize, and convey the most important information about you.

The Fix
If you’re having trouble squeezing all of your experience onto one or two pages, remember that a resume doesn’t have to be a chronicle of your entire career history—it should be a marketing document that uses your relevant skills and experiences to illustrate to the hiring manager why you’re the one for the job.

Mistake #3: “Creative” Formatting
When it comes to resumes, substance matters more than style. Recruiters will definitely prefer to see a simple, traditional, perfectly formatted resume than something creative that’s tough to read. Unless you’re applying for a job such as a designer or artist, your focus should be on making your resume clean and legible.

The Fix
When in doubt, go simple and spend most of your time sharpening your bullet points rather than making them look great. Then, make sure the formatting looks great no matter what program it’s opened in. Saving your resume as a PDF rather than a .doc file should help alleviate any formatting problems in different programs.

Mistake #4: Confidential Information
Don’t break the confidentiality policy of your previous firm—it definitely wouldn’t inspire trust in your potential employer.

The Fix
For anything you put on your resume, work this way: if you wouldn’t want to see it on the home page of theThe Punch Newspaper with your name attached (or if your boss wouldn’t!), don’t put it on your resume.

Mistake #5: Lies
People lie about their degrees, GPAs and where they went to school, how long they were at companies, how big their teams were, and their sales results. we probably don’t have to tell you what hiring managers think about that.

The Fix
Just remember what your primary school teachers told you: Honesty is always the best policy. If you feel like there’s part of your background that’s not quite up to snuff, your best bet is creative—but truthful—positioning.
These mistakes seem pretty  basic, but if Google sees them all the time? You can bet every other employer does, too. The good news is, they’re all totally avoidable. Make sure your (one- to two-page) resume is squeaky clean, and you’re already ahead of the game.


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