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

I read one (and i'm wincing just thinking about it!) that said they had 'experience at the cold-face'.

😩

Oh God these are all making me laugh but this one is my favourite!

Then there's this: https://www.today.com/food/people/woman-prints-resume-cake-nike-rcna49247

I wrote 'character witness' rather than 'character reference" when I was younger..I never did hear back!

I got one once for a freelance position who had "serial killers" and "coloured gases" among his interests. It was a science position but the coloured gases was too niche for us.

I love this idea

Also exclamation marks. I once read a CV that contained 42 of them.

1 jaunty ! is one too many and will get your CV binned round here.

For this very reason (that she knows me well), I never use my mum as a referee.

I had an applicant whose previous job role was 'Head of Terrorism.'

Not a typo, just an interesting job title 😂

I saw a CV many years ago where the person, under hobbies/interests, detailed his thoughts on the film 'Wild Wild West' vs 'Bad Boys'...... Not a sentence or two but paragraph after paragraph. This was not in an application for a role that had anything to do with film, comparative writing etc.

I once got a covering letter for a solicitor role working in child protection and the applicant said 'I'm just looking for a nice little job that isn't too stressful to take me into retirement'. - which based on their age was no more than a year away.

Child protection is very stressful and demanding and besides- why tell a prospective employer you don't want to work too much for 12 months.

You can protect a word doc from editing if you want

@mindutopia

" can't think of any myself, but I was hiring for a role once back in the days of paper CVs and we had someone apply using an 8 page (!!) CV printed on lime green plastic sheets."

Back in the days if very high unemployment, my then employer was recruiting and was inundated, roping in many of us office staff to do basic sifts.

Among other things the first sift removed any that were printed on coloured paper, unusual coloured or multicoloured inks and over elaborate fonts.

I got one in the post that had been spritzed with perfume. 😆 After the laugh I binned it.

I was once shortlisting for a junior role and read a really great cover letter - at the bottom was a line that read ‘here you go, don’t forget to format (and delete this bit of course!) Love mum x’

Yeah I ca see that - however this was for a NED role on an advisory board - we were paying expertise not hourly allocated time!

I used to work in a Jobcentre, UK. Any CV that was produced by someone who had attended any of the JobClubs or been on any of the Courses we sent people on was guaranteed to be riddled with errors and typos.

I recall hearing about a student applying for Oxford thought she would make her Personal Statement, or whatever they were called then, more interesting so she said she was a pigeon fancier. Unfortunately the man interviewing her was also a pigeon fancier and she was caught out big time.

For a few, specific jobs, that could be a brilliant idea.

Yes, but she now owns all those city centre car parks that generate millions a day with one member of staff and a couple of bags of gravel thrown around.😂and all the multi storey car parks in Dubai.

Recruiting for a reception type role. I think the applicant wanted to say that he had previous customer service / dealing with the public experience. What he actually said was, "I have exposed myself to customers many times."

I once asked my then boyfriend to print off my cv for me at his work.

He didn't understand that "advise" and "advice" are two different words and not a spelling mistake on my part, so he bloody changed it to what he thought was correct without telling me.

I sent it out without realising for ages.

This thread has reminded me of CV that went viral a few years ago. The guy had included video of him doing things like bench presses and playing tennis - He also claimed the Dalai Lama had written his college recommendation letter and he'd beaten Pete Sampras at Tennis.

If I remember rightly he nicked his "Impossible is nothing" tag line from Adidas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_(video_r%C3%A9sum%C3%A9)

I once received one that was SO bad:

• picture of the candidate with her kids at the top of the first page

-about 10 pages long, she'd had a LOT of jobs and listed every single one

-all in Comic Sans, with different bits in different colours, red, yellow, blue, pink, purple. Lots of random bold and underlined bits

But the best bit....

-every single job had a 'reason for leaving' and they were brutally honest. Things like

They promised me a payrise and I didn't get one

I wanted to do a qualification in (random thing) and they wouldn't pay for it

I was told I could be a fire Marshall and they changed their minds and I wasn't happy

I didn't fit in, everyone was younger than me

The manager I worked for died and I didn't like the other manager so I decided to leave

And so on. It was awful and amazing in equal measure

It's been about 30 years since I read a CV which listed under 'hobbies' that the person was an office holder --secretary or treasurer I think - of the (Town name) Rabbit and Cavy Fanciers Club.

It'll stick with me forever. It took everything I had not to giggle in the interview.