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.

Successful rehab doesn't involve much gravedigging.

I presume the original Sexy Sue is a lady of a certain age who managed to get in there and bag all of the correctly-spelled email address variants early on, long before all the pathetic young pretenders to her infamy were even born.

She's happily retired now and lives a very comfortable, privileged life in a manor house with land (room for a pony) in Somerset, hence you won't receive her CV anymore, now she's safely graduated from the cut-throat world of paid employment!

When I did my CV at finishing my PhD the student support said put everything as bullet points. The academic support said never use bullet points. There are pros and cons of both.

Bullet points make things clearer but generate dead space. Paragraphs fill the space and can be better if you have a lot of information to fit on the two pages. They also demonstrate your written prose better so it depends on whether that is important for the job. Bullet points may be more appropriate earlier in your career

I went with no bullet points. I wouldn't have fitted everything on the 2 pages if I hadn't. I applied for 2 jobs didn't get past HR for the first one as I was unable to move to the US for 3 months within the month - something which wasn't in the advert. I have been in the second job for 2 years

There are also different styles of CV. I helped my sister with a skills based one when she was starting her career as she was young and had ill health so the chronological narrative of the standard CV looked disjointed.

I was once asked to review some CVs - one had the line "A good poblem solver with a ken eye for detail". I once worked with a guy who briefly had his role on LinkedIn as "Poblem manager" - he fixed the error when I pointed it out. About a week after he fixed the spelling error, I got an email from a recruitment agent looking for a "Poblem manager"; if only my colleague had left his LinkedIn profile alone - the sad thing is I doubt he would have had the field to himself - there'd surely be plenty of other "Poblem Managers" out there looking for an exciting new role.

I’m crying 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Someone claiming to have a literature related Masters providing their cv full of spelling and grammar mistakes, and in the interview using phrases like "I seen that the other day". He didn't get the job.

I presume the original Sexy Sue is a lady of a certain age who managed to get in there and bag all of the correctly-spelled email address

True - I'm old, so I still remember an applicant with [email protected]

I once took the contact email address for a "j-Losbodydouble" made me laugh.

I agree. I was taught similarly.

I was quite pleased when I discovered what a functional CV was.

I used to say I was living my life in the wrong order. I didn't go to uni until I was in my 30s, while at uni I did a few courses at the local college as well as they were free and after uni I did an AS level so putting qualifications in chronological or reverse chronological order doesn't make any sense.

I think some teenagers are still being taught this. I was teaching IT to childcare students and they had to write CV for their childcare qualification.

They were listing all their GCSEs with grades even if they F and G grades. I had them putting "5 GCSEs grades A-C including English language and mathematics".

Yes this was a few years ago.

If you are going to work in a nursery the manager doesn't care if you got a grade G in politics GCSE.

For clarification, my father wasn't in a field where bulletpoints were inadvisable. He couldn't even say what was wrong with them. He would just draw a line in the air while pulling a stupid face and then talk about how brilliant he was. Lucky people who used bulletpoints and therefore never risked working for him. He was hauled before HR a couple of times and as little respect as I have for HR, I appreciate that action was necessary. My point is that you might find the recruitment is being done by a twat on a power trip who's looking for things to discount you because it makes them feel superior. You don't want to work for those people!

I’d say academics loath bullet points - business love them. We have scored people down in exercises for their failure to use bullet points and being overly wordy.

I owe my career to an ex boyfriend telling me to remove two words from my cv.

I recall telling a student a good 20 years ago not to use the email address for his hard rock band, EvilDeath@ provider.com.

I was more replying to the person that wasn't sure whether to remove the bullets in their cv.

Someone else mentioned academia Vs business and yes! In post doc level positions it definitely is frowned upon although in my actual day job our reports are PowerPoint - picture and bullet points rather than a written report!

I always put my dob on my CV

I was once tasked with estimating the age of applicants for a stack of cvs and remove any that were above or below a specific age criteria. If a company are going to judge me on my age I would rather they did so on my actual age!

There's so much bias in applications!
All the jobs I have got I have either known a mutual person or previously worked in the same companies never with the person. I don't think it particularly swayed their opinion but having the opening question of "I see you were at X in 2006 so was i, what a small world. Right shall we start the interview". The touch of small talk and familiarity put me at ease and I gave a better interview than when I applied places and had no connections

One of our colleagues did a degree on retiring at King College - one of his essays was marked down severely for having bullet points in it - he appealed and lost the argument but he was so incensed by the stupidity of not allowing bullets as a legitimate form of efficient communication he left and went to another Uni with more sense!
Anyway I'd say a few grads have to learn the hard way, some write their cover letter like it's a piece of poetic prose - this does not show me their mastery of the English language - it shows me they don't know how to write in business English - that is the most generous interpretation. What's more likely is the generic nature of the letter points to a letter written by someone else and the candidate's grasp of English is so poor they can't even tailor the letter.
And on cover letters - use them to tell an employer why you want to work in their industry, at their company and finally in the job you have applied for. Genuinely think about why, think about your journey and how it has led you to the job you are applying for - that's what I want to see in a cover letter and I only see it in maybe 10% of them and that's after we specifically asked for them to answer these questions.

I was once tasked with estimating the age of applicants for a stack of cvs and remove any that were above or below a specific age criteria. If a company are going to judge me on my age I would rather they did so on my actual age!

That's now illegal. Putting your date of birth on your CV suggests to the employer that you're not up to speed with equality legislation.

Putting your date of birth on a CV would not bother me in the slightest, I wouldn't notice.
Weirdly I'm not too fond of a photo on a CV - yet I am always a little suspicious of a lack of photo on LinkedIn - which I do realise is contradictory - it wouldn't be the reason for a pass or fail.

It was illegal at the time too. Didn't stop them asking me to do it!

I have a disability and they aren't allowed to discriminate on that but it goes nowhere near any applications because I know it can and will be used against me. Even if against equality law

Do tell!

Was it 'Screw Flanders'?!

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)

So that they'd know how to target their advertising. If no-one, or no-one suitable for that job, mentioned having seen it in the local paper, for example, they'd know not to bother with that in future. OTOH, most candidates for an office junior type role might have seen it in the local paper, so they'd stick with advertising those jobs there.

One of our colleagues did a degree on retiring at King College - one of his essays was marked down severely for having bullet points in it - he appealed and lost the argument but he was so incensed by the stupidity of not allowing bullets as a legitimate form of efficient communication he left and went to another Uni with more sense!

Bullet points were never acceptable in any academic essay I ever wrote. An essay is about developing an argument with supporting evidence. How do bullet points achieve that? They are for presenting factual information.

I didn't read his essay but I'd say sometimes factual information is required to back up an argument.
A PhD candidate once sent me a 5-page CV accompanied with a 5-page cover letter. It had taken them 8 years to complete their PhD - I was not in the least bit surprised. 😂

It's not difficult to more or less know the age of most candidates, regardless of whether or not they explicitly tell you, if they've told you the years when they did their A-levels/GCSEs etc.

Just like they don't need to tell you that they're from a wealthy, privileged home background - if their CV includes their attendance at Harrow School.

To an extent, you can also hazard a guess based on their name. If they're a Keith or Linda, they're highly unlikely to be in their 20s. I presume racist recruiters probably also find a convenient 'reason' why Balwinder or Mohammed's qualifications or experience 'aren't quite what we were looking for'.

I worked briefly for a recruitment agency and saw all sorts. My favourite was a guy who under hobbies and interests had written ‘bacon’.

I'm feeling bad now as I just helped my DS do his first CV using my template. I was unaware everything changed. In fairness he is just 16 so hobbies are the only relevant information about him. He plays with a local team at a high level so it's usually well respected and he mentioned ability to follow direction and work as a team. I thought it was impressive.

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