Please, please, if you're applying for a job.....

[seeker]

...make sure your CV is neat, tidy and well set out. Check the spelling and the grammar. Either write it or print it on the best paper you can manage, and make sure that all the pages are in order and the same size. If you make a mistake, start again, don't just cross out a paragraph and add another on at the end with an arrow to show where it should have been. Don't make jokes in your covering letter. Get the name of the place you're applying to and the person you're addressing right. Oh, and don't leave huge gaps in your employment history with no explanation.

Can you tell I've been short listing this morning? For a teaching post!

I can't believe, especially in these times, that people are being so slapdash! Handwritten corrections?! That is just

Makes me even more angry about the jobs I was never even shortlisted for when I had a perfectly set-out and calibrated CV addressing every one of the points in the person spec!

I know. I was absolutely flabberghasted at the standard of some of these the ones we looked at. And they were all graduates with experience!

I can't believe they wouldn't have the CV neat and tidy, given the idea is to get it right then just have to run copies off!

DH recently changed jobs and saw some of the applications for his previous position. Some of them went straight in the bin, they were so dreadful. There were very few good applications.

I cannot believe that anyone would find it acceptable to hand in a CV with handwritten corrections.

Were there some good applicants too?

By those standards dh's CV is looooovely and he's still not getting any bites

I graduated during the last recession and jobs were getting thinner on the ground every week, as illustrated by the rapidly-diminishing size of the graduate newsletter "Prospects Today" (affectionately known as "No Prospects Today"). I know how good people's covering letters and CVs needed to be even to get looked at - back in the age of Word 3 and the dot-matrix printer - so that makes me even more angry at how little effort people are putting in!

Still - this should at least give solace to those with decent CVs as it means they will stand out more. It must be a relief to find a good one who addresses 80% of what you are looking for.

It's a bit like the writing slush-pile, where less than 1% will actually get taken further by agents, but over 95% is total dross anyway - not just "needs some work" but absolute, unpublishable, what-were-you-thinking dross - so it isn't really competition for anyone half-decent.

2 excellent, and one maybe. Out of 10. And genuinely, some of the others may have been OK too - they just didn't tell us!

My fav was when i was interviewing a guy for a job where he would be dealing with some of our most important and prestigious clients.
i asked him how he would cope dealing with explaining difficult situations involving millions of pounds to these very important people.

He pondered a while and then replied

" I expect I'd probably shit myself"

I really wanted to hire him

And, another point, these CVs were being read by 2 unpaid volunteers and the head teacher, so they were all carefully read and evaluated.

In my previous life I wouldn't have even bothered to read more than half of them - it would have been a waste of time and tax payers money!

You mean you didn't?

That was to pagwatch

I know purpleduck. Shocking really.
I gave him some really nice biscuits though.

Actually as he stood up to leave he looked at me and said 'I didn't get it did I?' which made me want to knit something for him.

Sweetie. But rubbish

LOL Pagwatch.

I've got a job interview in a school. It was by application form, rather than CV though!

But, they are very good points! I've helped DH sieve through CVs for jobs where he works, and there are some pretty horrendous CVs out there!

Seeker, can I ask you a question as you are offering up career guidance here!?

I spent years fcuking about in Spain. I worked in bars, in the office of a trainer factory. Am I supposed to put down every crappy menial job I had (worked in a jewellery shop too). I mean the important bit surely is 'after 2 yrs in Spain my spanish reached a good level'. At my advanced age I wouldn't have room for every job. Also, the advice is to keep your cv short isn't it??

I try to be honest in what my cv reflects. I try not to give a false impression but the cv I recently drafted up does gloss over some years of my life and fine focus on other years.

is this acceptable?

Margot - it's important not to have any gaps. How about saying something like "Between xxxx znd yyyy I did a number of seasonal jobs in catering and retail in Spain. (details available if required) During this time, I worked on improving my Spanish, and am now at [whatever] level in spoken and written language"

Does that help?

I have spent the last 3 months working in a recruitment Consultants (tried a career change from procurement, hated it with a vengeance and have now got a job in procurement again - thank GOD). Anyway, the amount of crap CVs I have read, from professionals (these were from people applying for 60K jobs) is astounding.

One person wrote as their personal attributes 'I take no bullshit'

Another one said 'I have the gift of the gab'.

Spelling was atrocious. Grammar all over the place. Plus the level of lies. One person said he had a PhD and an MBA. Turns out he had an HND in Engineering!

About 90% of CVs were rejecetd outright due to sheer sloppiness and mistakes. Shocking!

Thank you Seeker. That's what I have done.
It does get hard in your late thirties to do a concise cv that sticks to just 2 pages.

I lied on my cv once. I said I had passed Irish (D) in the leaving cert. I hadn't. The RSA (name and shame) in Dublin fired me. Bastards! When I eventually got a permanent job in London, years later, as I'd temped in London for a while as well, I had a funny boss who used to say, ok, give me this report in Irish by 5.30! ha ha ha very funny!!

After the RSA sacked me for saying I'd passed Irish (bastards) I discovered that one of their trainee graduates wasn't even a graduate. I felt really hard done by then!!

Seeker - I feel your pain.

I remember last year recruiting lab techs (min A Level chemistry, Grade C GCSE Maths & English).
Some of the CVs and covering letters left a LOT to be desired.
Bearing in mind I was advertising on the JobCentrePlus Website, with my name clearly spelt out as Mrs Bouncing Turtle, I immediately rejected a couple of applications addressed to Mr B Turtle . A few of them had also spelt either my surname or my first name wrong! My surname is a very old and pretty common English name, it has variant spellings but the spelling of mine is the most common. My first name has 2 alternate spellings. But CONSIDERING IT WAS ADVERTISED ON THE WEBSITE AND THEREFORE PRINTED CLEARLY IN BLACK AND WHITE, is it too fucking much to expect that I do KNOW how to spell my own fucking name? And not have some dimwit applying to me for a job to correct it for me?

You can tell it is a bug bear of mine

DH was reviewing CVs last night. I don't think there was a single one which DIDN'T have a spelling or grammatical error. One person put in his covering letter that he was desperate for a job. He may well be, but it isn't good to tell a potential employer that.

I helped to sift applications for a supervisory job last year - we had emailed applications without an attachment which caused some hilarity but my favourite was the handwritten application written on a4 notepaper which had been torn from the pad badly .

I was actually told to invite everyone in since my manager decided to interview everyone anyway. When I rang the last applicant, they answered the phone with 'yeah?' despite presumably having given their mobile phone number out on job applications. Incredible.

pmsl @ Pagwatch's

'which made me want to knit something for him.'

Apparently Gordon Ramsay always rejects any letters (begging letters, job applications etc.) that spell his name wrong. So please bear that in mind everyone...

I hate this - both my first and surnames look like mispellings but they are not and people are always "correcting it" on appplications. Since it is both in the who to send the letter to and my email address you'd think it would be clear that I meant it that way.

Favorite application mistake - photograph printed upside down on a CV.

I agree, we recruit regularly and the standard of some of the applications is awful. We never get any that address all the points in the person spec!