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

What's "Folsom"?

Laughing out loud at this, bet it made the CV stand out 😂😂

I went to an all girls grammar school called The X County High School for Girls. Said school only took the top 3% in the catchment, so was full of high achievers and well known. On my CV I had it down as The X County High School for Girlies. It still makes chuckle now.

This example was not an error.

In my first secondary headship, I got an application for a teaching post to which the candidate added a CV (these are not usually requested nor required in teaching - we want the form completed fully plus a personal statement in support of the application).

Anyway, out of curiosity I had a look at the CV - which was more than 20 pages long.

Under "Interests" he had written that he was a blood and sperm donor.

Probably because her references were Folsom.

Sorry I'm howling at this 🤣

That is so the recruitment firm can make modifications

😂😂😂😂😂

Brilliant. Glad she got the job!

This is also a thing in Asia, and I had one CV where the photo was very obviously (to me anyway) his come to bed eyes in bed selfie. 😂

A mate of mine (a few years ago) was doing the advertising for a job

A lad applied and in his cv he had padded it out a bit by writing on it that he'd been on the Jeremy Kyle show

Twice

Something to do with a dna test and again with his relationship with his girlfriend-he claimed he'd never hit her and she was stopping him via the courts from seeing his baby-all there in the cv

My mate invited him for interview (I don't think he'd got many people applying and his boss told him to haul whoever had applied to come in) and not only showed up wearing a filthy tracksuit and trainers but my friend got the full story all the way through the interview which had nothing to do with the job

The lad didn't get the job

I'd just try to style that one out...

Many years ago I sent out a document which referred to something as having 'extensive links within the European Onion'. Thankfully it wasn't that important and didn't go far, but it took some living down 😖

We get a lot with all the guidance from whichever AI bit they’ve used to write the cv “you can use this section to expand on your skills…’
or
“add more details here regarding each qualification you have achieved” type of thing.

If you are going to use chat gpt to apply for a job, at least proof-read the damn thing!

One of the candidates to replace me claimed on his CV that his ambition was to become a “world famous ‘specific type of engineer’”
which seemed an odd thing to write. It’s quite a small industry so most of us are quite famous in our own little ecosystem

Trying to recruit a library assistant for a specialist academic library.

One of the candidates wrote us a very sweet paragraph about how they 'love' both literature and history and how Georgette Heyer is their favourite author.

Our assistants don't get a lot of time to sit around and read fiction, we don't actually have any, and my main hope is for someone who knows their alphabet and can put Dewey Decimals in order. Or at least one of those 😂

I see a surprising number of CVs in which candidates tell me about their amazing attention to detail and then sprinkle errors throughout.

Health professionals unable to answer simple questions about their registration is another one that drives me nuts.

Didn't know that about PDFs though. Every day is a school day, I guess.

To be honest, the CVs with funny typos or random experiences in them make them more memorable to me and make me want to meet the person. I'd have been laughing hard if I received your CV!! Sadly strict shortlisting guidelines in my org mean I can't just interview on memorable CV alone, as much as I'd like to.

I hate photos on CVs and really OTT Word CV templates which make it really hard to actually read the detail on the CV. I like it when they keep it simple instead of having a whirly background!

🤣🤣🤣🤣

see every time a story hits the press about an "enterprising" jobseeker printing their CV on a cake, or a t-shirt or whatever, loads of other job seekers think that's a great idea and recruiters across the country heave a collective sigh.

Back in the days of posting your paper CV, rather than emailing it, I typed out my CV and printed it off.
I noticed a couple of things that needed correcting so I crossed out this, added in that etc, then retyped it all out again and printed it off.
The following day, I realised to my horror that I had posted the original, complete with all the crossing out and adding on , and of which I had also used the back of to write my shopping list on, which included some very intimate items.
I never did hear anything back from what must have been a very surprised recruiter.

I hope they got the job.

"I'm looking to relocate to place x and this fantastic opportunity perfectly aligns with..." the job wasn't in place x. That was the previous company I applied for.

If that's not a reason to LTB I don't know what is.