What's the oddest thing you've seen listed on a CV?

[FelicityShagsWell]

What's the weirdest thing you've seen on a CV? I received one in application for a job and they had put a hobbies section in which they'd listed "smoking".

That reminds me of one I saw which read along the lines of 'Customer-focused retail professional with three years' experience patronising customers in a busy high street environment. Regularly thanked customers for patronising the store and took pride in delivering a patronising service that encouraged repeat business.'

I cannot believe they got someone else to proof read their application!

Someone applying for an admin role listed the dates of their marriage and divorce, plus everywhere they had been on holiday, with corresponding dates.

'Legally Blond' sort of thing?

Once had someone who listed "Girls" under hobbies - since they were going to be working in a university department, we passed ...

Another one! Who didn't read the rest of the thread. I answered this at 16.46.to someone else playing gotcha already.

I'm definitely not the CEO of Balfour Beatty intent on stopping married people from erecting scaffolding, or laying bricks, just because a job applicant voluntarily writes in an empty box for additional info: Marital status " iffy".

Although, in times past, it was not unusual to see such a question on forms. As others have commented.
Ok?

To all those who answered in the spirit of the thread, I've really enjoyed the smiles thanks! It's a pity we don't have as many laughs here as we used to.

Is it Octopush?

‘I work frenzickly to find the sauce of any pacific problem’

This was on a cv for an accounting job. To be fair the candidate was actually really good but also had dyslexia. They did well in the job.

I wondered that too!😁

Not a CV but a covering letter informing my boss that he didn't mind working for a woman and would even be happy to fetch the coffee occasionally. We thought at best it might be an attempt at humour . This was the eighties but even then it seemed outrageous. She filed the entire application in the bin

Not a CV but an interview. A colleague asked the question "What gets you out of bed in the morning"
"Usually my mum"

The poster has explained this.

😁

I worked in a clothes shop on Saturdays when I was in my late teens. One of the CV's someone brought in proudly stated that they had been on holiday to many places including "Devon and Conwoll".

Not sure if this quite counts but the applicant in question had quite a lengthy CV (unnecessarily so) and the final page was a printed gallery of sorts of their life events including some childhood photographs of a hobby, images from them studying abroad, graduating, their wedding, in sequential order and then there was some sort of message at the end of that page but I forget the content. Something along the lines of "hope to hear from you" in an awful garish font.

I thought it was ridiculous and ill-advised but had another hiring manager make a case that they liked it and thought it added a point of difference and visual context for achievements. We didn't interview them, if we had I would have asked about it.

We were advertising for a project delivery manager (heavy duty IT project rollout of a new system). Received an application from the local postman with 16 years in his current 'delivery management' job.

I couldn't work out if he hadn't bothered reading the job details and was mass applying, or if he actually thought his experience would be relevant

Scots law is a separate qualification from English law and a lot of it is in Scots.

That made me laugh!!!!

It amuses me when native English speakers, who completed their entire education in an English-speaking country, feel the need to specify 'fluent in English' on their CV 😂

I actually like some of the honesty some people show. With people using AI to write their professional statements and such like, these quirky ones might stand out as more authentic.

Who hasn't been to that shop, though 😅

I once got one with a hobbies section which simply read "Ross and Rachel" 🤣
He got the job but we teased him about it mercilessly for years afterwards

One that still tickles me is the one who in the same CV that mentioned their attention to detail went on to say that they ''created a team from starch". Was half tempted to invite them to interview, hand them a box of cornflour and say 'off you go then'....

😮

It was a CV.

Crying laughing at this one 😂

so funny.

my friend had listed ‘reflecting’ as one of his hobbies

This was told to me. It was a cv for a job which required a full employment history. There were very large gaps and in massive wobbly green ink the words "I cannot account for the missing years".