CVs - am I being fussy?!

[Ponzischeme]

Recruiting at the moment and we just have a sea of terrible CVs

Example:

Name: Sarah Jones
DOB: 15/6/1980 (don't need to know that)
Gender: Female (don't need to know that)

• Convoluted work history including saturday job at M&S in 1996
• List of all awards and achievements ever up to an including ballet certificate

I don't feel like I am that fussy when it comes to CVs - I just want an overview of the person's relevant employment history, skills and qualifications.

Am I wrong? Am I, in fact, expecting too much?

YANBU but this made me

I hired a basic admin role last year. I had 57 CVs, only 6 of which were decent enough to consider for interview!

I had one that totally missed off their most recent employment (?!) and one that gave a very detailed account of their employment gaps due to arsehole ex-h. The best was the guy who put playing the recorder at primary school down as an interest

YANBU especially as it sounds like you’re not interviewing for an entry level position!

It's not entry level no. It's not massively senior either but it does require a certain level of experience and it's pretty well paid!

Yes long employment gaps with no explanation is another pet peeve. I really don't mind at all that people took time off for their kids or whatever, but don't ignore that massive gap!

I was always advised to put my date of birth on....

Autumn totally outdated advice. You shouldn't need any personal details on there besides your name and contact details. I wouldn't even put my address.

Many recruiters will remove the name too, to allow for unbiased selection.

OP, do you expect dates for qualifications please?

I do contract work and a couple of places told me that if there's no date of birth, they think the candidate is old - yes, they are blatantly being ageist.

I stopped putting my DOB in my CV when I was about 17 or 18 when I was barely getting interviewed for anything, was applying for basic admin stuff at the time. As soon as it was taken off there I started getting interviews as presumably people were judging me on the content, my qualifications and suitability for the job, rather than just saying “too young” and discarding my application.

I never put my address!

I am not bothered about dates for qualifications - they can be there or not, I'm ambivalent!

You should never put in your DOB and if a company asks you for it they are being discriminatory. You can usually have a good guess at how old someone is by the range and dates of work history anyway.

I would hope I would never judge someone by how old they were but the fact of the matter is there are unconscious biases at play here within all of us - hence why personal details on CVs should be kept to a bare minimum.

Yes. I once had 125 CVs for an admin job and it was utterly depressing. There was also so much ‘magical thinking’, i.e. “I have absolutely none of the experience required by this role, but I’d give 100% and be amazing at it”, accompanied by about two lines of irrelevant information on work history.

Hard to tell if it was mostly job centre applicants meeting their quota, or young people with no idea how to job hunt.

I obviously mean no! You aren’t expecting too much!

Interesting. In teaching it’s always an application form, no CV (but with plenty of space to mention ballet exams and recorder club should you so wish), and I’m 99% sure they’ve always asked for DOB and address.

Sad fact is many people don't know how to fill in a cv. Try to see through it but in personal experience I find that the cv can be very telling in exactly this manner!!

At a previous job someone successfully claimed age discrimination for not getting a job during a recruitment process as there had been an age on the application form. After that they were always redacted! If you haven’t applied for a job for a long time I can imagine you wouldn’t know this is now a total no no...

Formatting is all over the shop too, which is a bit of an issue when one of the requirements of the role is decent computer skills.

Say but that was a form. It was demanded of the candidate. If I choose to put it on a CV, it's different.

With forms you'll often find that HR will remove details asked for like DOB and so on before they give it to the person doing the shortlisting. That's what equal opportunities forms are for as well.

On the other side of the coin, I’ve shortlisted CVs that look great, and are really well written, but turn out to have been written by ‘outplacement specialists’ rather than the candidate. The person showing up often has none of the presentation or communication skills suggested by the CV, to put it mildly!

I am involved in educational recruitment and any CV not including dob and dates when qualifications were obtained would not be considered.
We also receive lots of CVs from within the EU where there is a generic "European Format" for CVs. Many international organisations ask for a CV in this format. It includes all personal info as above.

Ugh I had one the other day for a professional position with DOB, nationality, and a waffly statement about trying to get back into work after being a SAHM at the beginning.

AND it was in Comic Sans MS!! I nearly sent it back with red pen all over it. I was cringing.

Oh I put nationality on too! I don't want people thinking my foreign name means I'm not British.

What a fucking minefield. I seem to have done all right for contracts with this approach so I think I'll just carry on I'm afraid.

Urgh YANBU OP.

Am currently in recruitment hell and this couldn't be more true You shouldn't need any personal details on there besides your name and contact details. I wouldn't even put my address.

You would not believe how many CVs have a picture on. They go straight in the bin.

All of the above and then the email addresses . My winner so far was hotpinkpussylips@?????????????.com

NO I do not want to employ somebody who thinks that is an appropriate email address on a CV.

Birth date is important. We are not allowed to ask for birth dates on our forms, but it is very easy to determine by checking the year of graduation.
The same with nationality. We cannot ask about ethnicity, but applicants have to state whether they are citizens and how long they have been citizens.
Whatever info you want you can usually locate if you are determined.

I really can't see how DOB is relevant. It shouldn't be important.

We get loads of CVs with photos too. Another massive no no. I know that is standard for many european countries though.