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.

Not on a CV but did type in a letter once that the person should be referred to a prostitute specialist and not prostate specialist. Thankfully picked up and corrected before the letter was sent.

One excellent newly graduated teaching trainee that we knew was not able to get interviews, though she had a good degree and her lecturers loved her. Nobody could understand what was was going wrong.
Eventually she managed to get sight of one of the references that had been sent to all potential employers. Instead of saying that she was "conscientious" it said that she was "contentious", hardly a recommendation!

Assuming the rest of the reference was positive, I'm surprised nobody realised it was a mistake. Is it standard in teaching to send full references before getting an interview or job offer?

The dangers of autocorrect and predictive text. You absolutely MUST proof read at least three times, and then give it to someone else to proof read, because your brain tends to anticipate seeing the word you meant to type, rather than seeing the word you actually typed.

I was helping a group with their CV’s. When writing a bit about themselves one woman wrote that she made a lovely Victoria sponge.

I've no idea if it is standard, though they'd presumably take up references before making a job offer, but sadly nobody did realise the mistake..

If you said you were contentious on your own cv the mistake would be obvious but on a reference it’s not so clear because it’s not an impossible thing for a referee to say.

My favourites were

• A guy who (intentionally) put his girlfriend's phone number on his CV with the explanation that she was the organised one and he probably wouldn't even answer if we rang him
• Someone who included their prison jobs on their CV... the pattern of their employment history was "lost job due to fight with employer" alternating with "prison sentence for assaulting former employer"
• Another guy who listed his hobbies as (and this is a direct quote, it's burned in my brain) "home projects, by home projects what i mean is motorbikes"

Another tip - use read-aloud software if you have it!

Unprofessional

That just shows you have good social skills 😂

Just remembered I once saw one for a very senior role (think about £175K plus) that told us that the applicant "has a very large collection of Enid Blyton books and enjoyed organising them" At a stretch the role was very loosely connected to the library service but even so!!

Reading some of the PPs I'm beginning to wonder if someone actually added it as a silly joke because the rest of their application was very impressive

What’s wrong with motorbikes?

I think you've missed the point, @Curtainsforus ...

Nothing, it's the fact he inserted the unnecessary 'home projects by which I mean ...' It suggests that as far as he is concerned there is nothing else worth doing at home except 'motorbikes' i.e. he is obsessed with them.

If he'd just put motorbike riding./maintenance/customisation no one would have thought anything of this as a perfectly normal interest.

Clearly 😂 I was expecting something a bit more 😳

I've just looked this up. Sadly he took his own life. Such a shame as the world lost out on a clearly very bright and unique individual. Most of us couldn't come close to achieving what he did.

When I was shortlisting candidates for work in a radiology department for administration assistant. To the question:
Why do you feel qualified for this role?
One candidate answered: I like working alone in the dark and am not too good with other people.
I did joke at the time that they had inadvertently described half of the staff.

Who? The applicant or my friend?

The applicant is obviously unprofessional, but as for my friend? Nah. Not really. It's her own very small company. She only employs three other people. She's not an HR manager of a big firm or anything.

Let's say they advertise for a qualified electrician (for example) they get inundated with CVs from people with no experience as electricians whatsoever and some of them can't even write an application letter in basic English. They are obviously just churning out the job applications to keep the numbers up, so their benefits don't get sanctioned. Some of them even seem to be absolutely terrible on purpose. It wastes huge amounts of her time and pisses her right off.

Yeah. I mean the applicant who made a joke in the cover letter.

Spoiler alert: they didn't get the job, we preferred to keep our customers alive 😂

In my capacity as a killer whale, I have assassinated many customers.

@Recruiter123 How mean of you... he was clearly giving customers an individualised high class service that they'd never have a chance to forget.

Agree. Also, many of the ways in which people might decompress are not typically categorized as 'hobbies'. One would not normally call 'putting your feet up and having a cup of tea' or 'sitting in front of the TV' or even 'reading the threads on Mumsnet' a hobby; yet they are all common enough ways to decompress.

Have you still got his contact details? Asking for a friend!