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

[Kidulthood2027]

Have just realised I've been sending off a CV with a sentence that reads "I undertook regular security checks of the hotel during evening shits." I had meant to say "shifts". I thought I had proofread the CV thoroughly before sending it off, but clearly not enough. I was wondering why I was receiving so little interest for basic retail/food service jobs. Absolutely mortified. Any stories to make me feel better? Can be from you or from CVs you have reviewed during your working life.

Of course it's not.

But good recruitment practice is to eliminate possible sources of bias and discrimination.

It used to be standard to put your age, sex and marital status right at the top of the CV. We've stopped doing that. As several PP have pointed out, in some countries photos are expected - and judged in discriminatory ways. There was a brief flirtation with them on British CVs too, but fortunately people realised how harmful it was.

Hobbies don't usally tell you if someone can do the job, and can be detrimental, so shouldn't be part of a CV. If they actually are relevant to a particular post they can be explained in the skills section.

I'm just wondering now what would have happened if the company to which you were applying were some kind of food business, and you later discovered that they made billions by launching 'their' exclusive extremely-popular curry, based entirely on your recipe that you sent them - like in the Beefy Bake episode of Still Game with Pete the Jakey

Love it!!

Not quite the same thing, but I do wonder if these two gentlemen got their jobs/assignments 100% purely because of their personal skills!

Also remembering the ever-hilarious debacle featuring poor Guy Gomer, who had applied to the BBC for a backroom job and found himself being interviewed on live TV as their 'expert' on something he (unsurprisingly) had no idea about at all!!

But just because they maybe shouldn't be there, from a recruiting (but not necessarily a candidate) pov, that doesn't mean that they don't sometimes give applicants an advantage that they would obviously want to capitalise on - even if maybe unfairly.

Moreover, considering how very many men who 'just happened' to have the fact that they attended Eton/Harrow/Winchester or similar on their CV mysteriously end up altogether in high-powered, highly-paid jobs that they seem summarily unable to cope with at all, can you really blame an intelligent and capable person who went to an unremarkable comp in Wrexham for mentioning a hobby or interest that they know might put them in a favourable light or open up a natural opportunity to positively 'sell' themselves?

Years ago when looking over applications to teach on Business Studies courses, every one that had "buisness" in the covering letter went straight in the bin. For context all teaching jobs had application forms not CVs back then. They might still do for all I know.

This made me laugh harder than anything I’ve ever read on Mumsnet

OK so I have loved reading this thread but it's alarmed me somewhat. I am a 45 year old looking for work. Can someone help me with what a CV should look like these days pls? I'll remove hobbies! I don't have typos but worried it's too old school. Thanks to anyone that can help me. I've been out a while so it won't necessarily be easy finding work. Sorry to sidetrack the post at all.

Sorry guys perhaps I should start a new thread.

@Lookingallthetime you might find it worth going through a recruitment agency and get their help for that? I had been in the same role for decades and my CV was pretty oldstyle and I just did not really know what was wrong with it. I went to a recruitment agency and they re-did it according to the current preferred fashion for my industry and it was via them I then got my next role.

Very best of luck!

Thank you. I'll see about doing that

I can't now find the post that I wanted to quote, but it was from someone saying they don't understand why people include a hobbies section on CVs.

People of my age (mid 50s) were taught to include a hobbies and interests section when we learned how to do a CV. Some of those people will have been in the same job since leaving school in the mid 80s and haven't caught up that the accepted way of doing this has changed.

I have actually seen that recently in a job advert for ‘Principle ‘ of xxxx Academy !

Yes, I think this is a very good point.

For most people, you learn how to write a CV towards the end of your education and then you never really re-evaluate the whole process again; when you update your CV, you base it on what you personally know a CV to be.

Even if you did think to check for any subtle changes that might have arisen in 'standard' CVs since you learned, you still have no way of knowing the age, personality or preferences of the person/people who will review it.

You may include your hobbies and find that the person who reads it thinks "This is very poor - surely they know that your hobbies are completely irrelevant? Why should I care about that? I want somebody who will set their mind to the important task at hand." Or you may not include your hobbies and find that the person who reads it thinks "This sounds like a dull person - I'm glad they seem to have a good work ethic, but they haven't mentioned a single thing about their interests outside of work to balance it out; I don't want to be stuck working for 8 hours every day with a boring person with nothing about them and no interests to chat about."

I think the problem is that, whilst you can take as much advice on a good CV as you can find - and I think we'd all agree that it's best not to mention being on Jeremy Kyle or your love of swinging - the range of CV content that impresses any potential recruiters can be as broad as the number of recruiters themselves.

Your quirky mould-breaking 'stand-out' submission may really catch their eye and impress them with your originality, your individuality and the fact that you don't blindly follow the crowd; or they may see it as an embarrassing gimmick from an irritating attention-seeker who doesn't understand the first thing about what a CV 'should' be and bin it instantly.

I didn't instantly spot that you were pointing out the wrong usage for 'principal' and assumed you were referring to a role for a 'character' to run a sleazy, grubby 'adult' establishment

the range of CV content that impresses any potential recruiters can be as broad as the number of recruiters themselves.
This is true. Everyone I show my CV to says it is shite. So I make changes they suggest, show to next "expert" who says "that's shite".

@SeanBeansMealDeal

Yes, I think this is a very good point.

For most people, you learn how to write a CV towards the end of your education and then you never really re-evaluate the whole process again; when you update your CV, you base it on what you personally know a CV to be.

Exactly this.

Part of this may be that when applying for jobs as a school leaver you don't have any work experience to speak of to put on a CV so the "hobbies" section is there purely to flesh it out and give it some content, but I remember clearly once my experience started to build wondering how on earth I was meant to keep everything to two pages and also still include all the sections I had been taught to include; I didn't know I was allowed to leave it off to make room for more relevant content.

When I learned to do a CV in the mid 80s, we were taught to include the following, in this order:

Personal details (name, address, telephone number, date of birth, marital status)
Work experience in reverse date order: where you worked and your duties (not listing achievements as is done these days!)
Exam results (including all subjects and grades)
Hobbies and interests
The names and contact details of two referees

Things have changed since then, but there are undoubtedly people of my age still using this format and not knowing it's "wrong", and if you don't know you're doing it wrong, you don't research how to do it correctly.

Oh, also: We weren't taught that we had to tailor it for each job in those days. A CV was simply a factual document of what you'd done and when (literally "the course of life") and the only time you updated it was if you changed job, so we had one CV and sent it out unedited for every application.

The cover letter was the place where we "sold" ourselves, and told the recruiter why we believed we were suitable for the job, but even that had to follow a very strict format, such as:

• I am writing to apply for the position of (whatever), as seen in (where you saw the ad, you had to include this for some reason)
• a paragraph about how keen we were and why we believed we'd be suitable for the job
• a closing paragraph saying you'd be available for an interview at their convenience and could supply references on request

It was all very formulaic.

The number of times I've told students' to use their college or school email not their personal one and they say, "But I never check that".

Well set up to make the school email forward it to sexxy_sue... why is it always 'sexy' with two 'x'es?

The truth is, there's a lot of subjectivity involved, even when you've tailored the CV to the job and all the rest of it. An older person who has an officially "outdated" approach might be reading, or a person who gets a power trip off it and is looking for anything to criticise (we've had one on here and my father was one too; he used to sneer at bulletpoints). Some CVs are obviously egregiously badly done and there are a few huge no-nos but in a world where someone got the job after accidentally submitting a joke CV claiming that she shot a man in Reno just to watch him die... Imagine if the reader wasn't a Johnny Cash fan!

Can someone please tell us the big no nos. I've got bullet points! Is that a big fat mistake?

I've mentioned this on her before. I once received a cv from a male candidate who described his previous role as "performing manly administrative tasks." I think he was missing an "i"!

Exam results (including all subjects and grades)

Recruiting for a senior position recently. Most applicants just stated their undergraduate degree and any post grad qualifications. But we had one who listed his A levels grades too - and they were very mediocre even allowing for grade inflation since he took them more 30 years ago. Put me off. We did interview because his experience seemed a perfect fit, but I should have gone with my first reaction. He didn’t get the job. There may be reasons why your school grades were poor but not a reflection of subsequent achievement/ ability, even if just immaturity. But 35 years later applying for a senior role, unless explicitly asked, miss them off.

In a previous role I used to help school leavers apply for training or work. The sheer amount of rude/ offensive email addresses was staggering, I always advised them to set up a serious one . Also one lad got through the telephone, 1st and 2nd interviews and the company had called him to offer a position but his phone went to voicemail and his outgoing message was an expletive riddled homophobic rant, so they decided not to offer. He was most put out when he asked for feedback as, in his words he was " just pissing about " 🙄

No. This was my father talking, 30 years ago, and if he were alive now he still wouldn't know what he was talking about. He was just getting off on having the power to choose who to interview.

By huge no-nos, I was thinking of things like bikini photos and middle aged people talking about playing the recorder in primary school.

I have a fine eye for derail.