To ask for the worst CV's you've ever seen?!

[Isitgiroday]

About to pimp my CV prior to a career change after almost a decade in the same industry - looking for tips and hints of what to avoid!

And err, yes I’m aware my detail was incorrect...lol

Personally I don’t like a section on Interests - waste of time. I couldn’t care less what you like doing in your spare time, I just want to know if you can do the job.

I feel like it might be acceptable if you're a Katherine Grainger type:

"In my spare time I won multiple Olympic and World Championship medals in rowing, including a silver at Rio 2016, all whilst adding the finishing touches to my Law PhD at KCL."

I'd be impressed as a recruiter. Girl can multi-task.

@Purplecatshopaholic the amount of people who missed your joke 😂😂😂

Other than the obvious (spell check etc) I find the apprentice-style pun-filled boastfests quite difficult to stomach. Two recent examples from shortlisting for me though- don't list your only relevant experience as listening to a podcast every week, it doesn't instill confidence. Also don't lie (Someone who I used to supervise when they volunteered in our department a couple of years ago applied for a paid position, obviously didn't realise that I'd come back from maternity leave... so I had the pleasure of reading their application for shortlisting where they claimed to have designed, set up and run a series of patient groups. Great, except that was my work, not theirs. Needless to say they weren't offered an interview).

I once received a handwritten one on a small (maybe A6-sized) piece of lined paper ripped out of a notebook with a shopping list of electrical items on the back.

I felt it must be a joke but treated it as if it was serious and responded giving feedback.

Never forget that, unless you work in a very niche role, there will be many, many CVs. The initial recruitment phase isn't to find suitable candidates, it is to reject clearly unsuitable ones. Don't give them ammunition!

OP- used to temp in HR, they specifically liked;

• good layout, simple with bold/underlined headers to divide each section

• all the contact info up top and easy to find

• cut out unnecessary job history- the amount of people who still had their part time school job was insane

• agree that personal interests only worth including if particularly relevant/impressive

oh, and if you look for some phrasing online, don’t copy paste it, but reword- sooo many people would paste the same thing they had found on google!

I had a friend who was going through cvs and one lad said he’d been on the jezza Kyle show-with full details
Might be best avoiding that one if you ever went on it

In my recruitment days someone sent us a CV which included 7 pictures of the applicant in different tuxedos.

'Here you go, hope this helps. Remember to tailor it slightly for different roles and don't forget me and your dad can always proofread if needed. And don't forget to take this bit out!! Love you, Mum xxx'
Genius! I’d have emailed to ask if their mum was available for interview

I agree re: SPAG checking more than anything else. Also photos not great plan imo

Personally I also have a hatred for personal statements. meaningless fluff of vaguely positive shit which rarely actually relates to the person

Interests section good as long as it isn’t longer than the rest of your CV and make damn sure they really are your interests. Was in a horribly embarrassing interview which had been going well until it got to discussing the guys interests (something obscure around astronomy). The chap running the interview also happened to be really interested in this. Sadly, after only one question, it became quite obvious the candidate didn’t know anything about his purported hobby.....he would have been offered the job too

We had an applicant who had listed on their CV that they previously worked at Hotel Fuck. It was apparently a genuine town, I think in Germany. Not the worst, but it did get a few laughs!

On the cover email, spelling the hiring managers name wrong!

@Davros

Don't put an apostrophe in a plural

My old boss was the queen of this, so not sure how she got recruited.

Or even worse, great CV, fantastic interview, turns out to be the biggest twat in christendom who attended work for 4 weeks in 4 months then left saying it was too stressful for him.
Would love to elaborate but too outing

I think the last time a lot of people were taught how to write a CV was in school/college/University and they don't realise that when they are more established in a career, the CV needs to look a little different.

So for an entry level post aimed at school leavers or graduates, I would expect to see more personal achievements/interests, particularly if they can link it to why they want/would be good at the role. It's also nice to have something to talk to them about at interview and put them at ease a little.

When you've been doing a similar role for the past decade, I don't particularly care that you enjoy eating out and reading detective fiction.

@Sparklesocks

I used to recruit administrative staff at my old job and have seen quite a lot of CVs. The best advice is for them to be clear, concise and well presented. Only a couple of pages ideally, with tight bullet points. Anything else you want to emphasise or elaborate on can normally be added into the cover letter.

Yes agree with above, no photos. I know it's the done thing in a lot of other countries but not in the UK.

Also no wacky fonts or colours (unless perhaps it's for a design job, but even then it needs to be done very well!).

We also once had a stay at home parent who hadn't worked for a few years and so listed things they did at home like duties at a job e.g. 'manages all bills/mortgage and pays on time', 'co-ordinate complex schedules for children', 'created and manage a cleaning rota to keep household in shape'. I know it was an attempt to be creative but it wasn't necessary and felt misguided, just a note about the fact they'd been raising their children for the last few years to explain the gap would've been absolutely fine.

But the worst was a pretty well written CV and cover letter of a graduate who had applied for one of the entry level roles. At the end of a cover letter read this note:

'Here you go, hope this helps. Remember to tailor it slightly for different roles and don't forget me and your dad can always proofread if needed. And don't forget to take this bit out!! Love you, Mum xxx'

Not ideal!

I'm HR so I've seen sooooo many bad CV's. My top tip however is to adjust your CV to the job you are applying for.

Agree with all these. I think on the caring/time out one, absolutely do NOT talk about multitasking as a key skill developed while wrangling 4 kids. However, if you were the chair of the PTA for 3 years during which your school raised £30k and initiated xx new projects, or volunteered on a regular basis somewhere or provided your skills free of charge to a friend setting up their business (all examples I have seen), I do think that's perfectly valid. As long as it's not bigged up like it's the equivalent of your pre-kids job as a Partner in a city law firm.

It can go as sub bullets under the time out for caring or it can go at the end under "additional information" or "additional experience".

So many women I know who have taken time out for caring responsibilities genuinely did do more than childrearing that those things CAN be relevant, if shown correctly and appropriately.

Funniest one was for an entry level office position. Candidate had seven pages of cv right from when she was in nursery and all the pageants and contest she had been in right up to the ones she was planning to enter in the future. And her watermark was her with her sash and crown from one of said pageants.
Fuck all about her typing/telephony skills. Or indeed any of her other previous jobs.

Another one is to ensure your email address isn't cutesy or offensive. OH got a perfectly decent CV and well worded cover letter from a person who's email had the word fucker in it. So if your email is DeathToAllPigs@whatever, change it for a more respectable one.

Cut out the fluff. Nobody wants to hear that you won a prize at 7 for your drawing, and details of each report card from when you were four. Adult achievements only, unless it was something like getting a scholarship in your teens/uni.
Cut out the hobbies, unless it's very unusual or has a relevance to the role - for example, you run a birdwatching group and the role is an environmental based one.

Keep to two pages if possible, only relevant and recent job history, please do a SPAG check, list interests only if they're relevant - e.g. applying to an industry in which you enjoy hobbies perhaps, and I tend to keep a "stock" CV which I use for LinkedIn and recruiters etc but if I am applying for a job I always adapt mine to highlight the relevant experience a bit more fully if I can. I've worked in a few different areas, so the stock CV isn't always the best one depending on the role.

The worst one I ever saw came for a receptionist position we were hiring for at a charity I worked at. It was 8 pages long and printed on plastic lime green matte translucent sheet. I don't even know how to describe it other than it was like those plastic sheets you used to put under the overhead projector thing you used to have in school (dating myself here) that shined a light through them and projected them onto the wall. 8 pages of lime green translucent plastic sheet .... no idea anymore what the hell was even on those 8 pages, but it must have been every possible detail about her life ... and then she also included a 50 page copy of a patent application she had applied for for some new design of traffic flow multi-story car park. It was truly bizarre. I think she obviously had some mental health difficulties. I don't think we called her for an interview, but we all really wanted to as we were truly just curious what was on the other end of that CV.

I don't recruit anymore, but photos are generally quite useful if the person is going to be client-facing. I also think including interests for a professional role when there is little differentiation between qualifications in candidates.

However, the worst ever CV I read was both stained and sticky! I did contemplate putting it in the clinical waste bin.......

I try to remember that usually, a CV has only one very specific objective - to get you an interview. So I try to keep mine brief - profile, skills, experience

"Personally I don’t like a section on Interests - waste of time. I couldn’t care less what you like doing in your spare time, I just want to know if you can do the job."

Yes, I know a few people who feel like this, but I don't agree personally. Some interviewers like to have warming up questions so might ask about your interests. Interests can also show some skills you may have, not gained from work.
As you say, photos are normal in some countries, but not seen as a good thing in the UK.

I had one years ago applying for a job in retail who put the reason for leaving last job.
“Fired for stealing from the till”
That one went straight in the no pile!