20 Reasons Your CV Is Letting You Down (Part 1)

By Ruoro Kairu 

Over the weekend, I attended a social event. At one point, Nancy, a friend shared her story about how she has been applying for jobs for six months without any success.

Her frustration was the lack of response from recruiters upon submission of her CV. She was sure she had the right skills, and she had previously been coached on how to ace an interview. The only problem, she was not being called in for any interviews.

After listening to her for half an hour, I requested her to share her CV with me so I could have a look and see if it was the issue. She shared it on the same day. I was shocked to see despite her qualifications and achievements, she did not know how to clearly portray this on the CV.

Are you a job seeker out there, applying for jobs left right and center, day in, day out? Yet, you are not getting any feedback from employers and recruiters?

Here are mistakes I picked up from Nancy’s CV that will definitely lock you out of a job.

1. Improper email address

When you send in your application through email, your address and name are the first things a recruiter will see.

How professional is your email address? If it is something funny or unethical, the recruiter might not even get to open your CV.

Opening a new email address takes less than five minutes, but its implications on the name you use could help or ruin your chances of being called in for an interview.

A professional email should ideally consist of your name and nothing more. If you have a common name, chances are, the first few suggestions might already be taken. However, remember there are myriad avenues you can open an address from Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail are just some of the free and popular platforms.

Try as much to exclude numbers from your email address –yes, even when it’s a suggestion from Google.

Read on to see more reasons your CV us letting you down.