Your CV is the first impression a potential employer will get of you; no doubt, you would want it to be a great first impression. Professional and organised content is good enough, but you must stand out to truly pique the recruiter’s interest—after all, they likely go through tens, hundreds, or even thousands of applications before getting to yours. You want to make sure that when they get a hold of your CV, they are intrigued enough to want to learn more. A combination of impressive content and great design will do this for you. Let’s look at some common mistakes to avoid.
1. Starting With a Clumsy Title or Title Page
Adding the title ‘CURRICULUM VITAE FOR . . .’ in big and bold lettering, besides being unnecessary, looks archaic and clumsy. Everyone who receives your CV will know what it is—that’s the whole reason you sent it in a job application. You don’t want to start clumsily; remember, this is the very first impression of your first impression. You, especially, don’t want to start with a title page, which takes up precious page real estate and makes your CV unnecessarily long. Instead, begin with your name, profession, and contact details.
2. Including Too Much Personal Information
The only personal information a recruiter needs is your name (to identify you) and your contact details (to reach you if you pass to the next recruitment stage). If your work involves a lot of moving around, then also make sure to add a driver’s licence. The rest of the personal information should only be added if it has been requested or if it’s an advantage in some way.
Some candidates add their national identity number, passport number, driver’s licence number, marital status, and religion. Adding too much personal information (including full name and identification numbers) puts you at risk of identity theft. Consider that you upload your CV on recruitment sites sometimes, and you have no idea of the actual people who will have access to it.
These unnecessary details also increase the chances of discrimination based on non-professional reasons. At the very least, the recruiter will wonder why you included details they don’t care to know and that don’t market you for the position. If something will just be a distraction and a waste of space, don’t include it.
3. An Uninformative Profile and Attributes
Your profile is supposed to sell your experience, achievements, and skills. Attributes should not just be words on paper—they must be provable. Your profile should sum up who you are (professionally) in a few statements. Instead of going on and on about how you are self-motivated, results-driven, hardworking, innovative, goal-oriented . . ., focus more on facts about yourself that show these attributes—your level of experience, your actual achievements, your competencies. This also ensures that a copy of your profile (or a very close resemblance of it) will not show up after a brief Google search.
If you’re going to google a generic profile to include in your CV, then best to leave the profile out. Your profile has to uniquely describe you. If it’s going to sound generic, there’s no reason to include it.
4. Leaving Out Achievements and Provable Skills
Achievements are the best way to distinguish yourself. They prove your ambition, drive, focus, and that you will go beyond expectations. You should make sure to include them. Always look at the work you have performed in the past and then determine all the skills you acquired—include them in your CV.
5. Too Much Mundane Detail
Keep your duties/ responsibilities/ tasks concise. Contrary to what you may be thinking, less is more. A few specialised duties (which show your impressive skills set and level) are better than a long list of mundane, routine tasks that hardly require any expertise.
Keep repetition to a minimum. Some candidates go to the extent of copying/ pasting the same duties as much as 3 times! Can you imagine being the recruiter and having to read the same information thrice? In such cases, combine the experience—list the work experience then list the duties you performed.
A complete but concise CV will always give you points—it proves you’re organised, able to prioritise, a good communicator, and pragmatic.
6. Inconsistent Fonts/ Bullet Points/ Colours/ Spacing
Most of the time, consistency is desirable. It proves how organised you are, your high attention to detail, and how you value the quality of your work. Times New Roman applied to one heading then Cambria applied to the next shows the opposite characteristics.
When you’re ready to design your CV, always come up with rules. They can look a little like this:
- All headings are Times New Roman, 13 pt., 1.5 spacing, navy blue colour
- All main content is Calibri, 11 pt., 1.0 spacing, black colour
- Spacing between sections is 11 pt., 2.0 spacing
- A light grey line, 1 pt. weight, separates sections
Stick to these rules religiously. You will notice that your CV comes out looking great, even with the simplest design choices.
7. Unnecessarily Wide Spacing
In professional documents, narrow spacing looks best. A spacing of 1.5 can look clumsy, almost like you’re trying to fill a page. With the general rule being a shorter CV, it’s best to use a spacing of 1.15 or even 1.0 (especially for bulleted points). The trick is to design your spacing rules in such a way that sections do not look squashed.
Sometimes, CVs become unnecessarily long because of very wide spacing. But, you can instantly tell when there’s not much content in a CV. This makes the design look clumsy and unintentional. You want to make sure that when the recruiter holds your CV, they see the intent, focus, and high-quality result—all working to upsell you as a serious professional.
8. Monotonic Layout
For a clearer CV, make sure to highlight sections using heading fonts, bold text, spacing, and lines. Use bullets for points to stand out. A CV created using default MS Word formatting looks monotonic and unimaginative. Imagine that you are the recruiter and you want to jump to specific sections of the CV. Which design choices would make this easier for you? What can make headings stand out? How can you separate sections?
Design is not always about making things pretty. It should be functional—that colour or font you choose should make headings stand out, those lines you decide on should clearly separate sections, and those spacing rules should signify transitions.
9. Inconsistent Writing
One duty is written in the past tense, the next is written in the present tense; one reference starts with the referee’s name, the next starts with the company name; one phone number starts with the country code, the other does not begin with the code . . . These inconsistencies prove your lack of attention to detail and to work quality—which gets us to the next point.
10. Not Editing and Proofreading Your CV
If you don’t edit your CV, you will not catch obvious errors. Reading it aloud as you edit is a good technique. Errors that sound okay when we read by heart are usually exposed when we read aloud. Make sure to go through your CV at least twice.
To get all the important information, advice, and tips, check out The CV Design Guide PDF eBook or get the FREE Cheat Sheet.
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