To ask for the biggest CV fails you've come across?

To be honest, I haven't even found one that would pass my level of scrutiny.

You mean you haven't found even one.

Congratulations 🎈 on being so thoughtless with people's futures, I hope it made you feel big and clever.

I don't think you really understand the purpose of CVs!

And your comment is ageist

made me laugh but poor you

Many years ago, I worked in a recruitment office. One CV explained that as a student he had had a job at a safari park where he had to dress up as a whale as a promotional thing or kid's entertainment or something.

All fine. But then he started the blurb with the immortal words "in my capacity as a killer whale...".

It became a standing catchphrase in the office after that.

A county council had a job sheet called Trawl. Except someone called it Troll several times on an application.

I'm very "punchable" instead of "punctual"

Regarding typos, does anyone else find that they can read through a document on a screen, decide it's fine, print out out and find loads of errors?

Not a CV but I once wrote my name incorrectly on an application form, back in the days of written forms and envelopes! I was living abroad but applying for jobs in the UK, I was part way through filling it in when the phone rang. I finished it quickly and rushed to the post, I got a phone call for interview and the first question was What's your first name as you've written your surname twice? I got the job though, luckily I taught a shortage subject.

To be honest, I haven't even found one that would pass my level of scrutiny.

From obvious spelling issues, overlapping/incorrect dates, inconsistent grammar, formatting misalignments... I can rip even the best CV to shreds!

I'm in a scientific field, and you'd be amazed how many people don't know scientific nomenclature, e.g. putting a space between 5 g (5 grams), or using superscript zeros instead of a degree sign.

Happy to proofread a FEW if anyone's struggling.

I've seen sports and extracurricular activities in CVs from candidates aged 40+! That always gets me :)

A prison, the Reno reference is from a Johnny Cash song which he sang when he did a concert at Folsom Prison. Maybe the candidate was a boy names Sue.

I'm an editor by trade so super paranoid about typos and errors in my CVs as they have to be right.

I actually have a 2nd interview tomorrow for one role where I realised there was a typo in my application so I re-sent it and it looks like hopefully they only looked at the correct version.

I've not done much hiring so haven't seen any howlers, but I did see an agency recently advertising for a role where the client wanted the role to help uphold 'there reputation' 😆

Oh God yes I have had jobs where I recruited people and the worst was [email protected] 😳

Oh dear...

That's a shame they blew it.

Some of these are really funny.

I’ve just been recruiting and am always surprised at how many people don’t even apply for the right job. So the covering letter tells you how very excited they are to apply for some other random job.

They didn't even get an interview. The whole application form was full of answers like that. Pretty sure they wrote as answers to some questions "I don't care" and "No idea".

When I was hiring I rejected all CV's with photos attached.
But then we also used to throw them up in the air and the ones facing up got a read - face down went in the bin.

A very shady acquaintance asked me to read her CV and help cut it down so it fit on one page. It was for an admin/office-based role so I suggested removing ‘clean uk drivers license’. She agreed and said ‘yeh ok… it isn’t even true’ 🙄

Oh bless them. Did they get the job?

I wrote I had good attention to detail. I accidently left 2 years off my CV, they asked about it, I said where it was included, they said it was not there that the dates didn't match. I was so embarrassed. I got the job though.

A hr company had done my CV since I had been in non related roles/ travelling for a while so I was annoyed a them. But it was my CV I should have looked over it more thoroughly

I was given some job applications to read over when I worked in the kind of shop where you put out stock and work on a till. One of the questions was "Why do you want the job?". The applicant had written, in really tiny writing, "For my self-esteem".

@VickyEadieofThigh - it's the Johnny Cash song.

I think I'd employ that girl tbh!

I know someone who works outdoors in the countryside. Numerous references to this throughout, unhappily with the "o" missing.

Lovely person too, felt so sorry for them when realisation dawned.

I employ alot of teenagers and CV skills clearly isn't taught very often any more as we have had some awful ones!
One used a template and forgot to remove the [insert skill] bits. He also hadn't even read it himself because there is no way that he learnt skills such as "how to encourage a team to foster good relationships" or some similar bullshit - whilst working as a pot wash at 15 years of age.
One put in her first paragraph "I want to prove everyone wrong and show the haters I can do it if I put my mind to it". So many more I cannot think of off the top of my head.

Missed the “O” out of Account manager once