12 Viruses In Your CV

By Moruf Kolawole Nasir


Errors/mistakes in CVs is also an area which has been widely written on, but most of the articles are filled with conflicting dos and don’ts thus putting job seekers in more confusion. We will attempt to identify some likely ‘dents’ in most job seekers CVs.

1. Copy & Paste Syndrome: Almost all of us are guilty of this, right? I was going through the CV of an applicant for a driver’s job few months ago, the young man can neither read nor write (because he could not fill a form given to him) yet his hobbies are reading and writing. In another case, a very smart looking fresh graduate was referred to me, I asked him questions relating to his course of study he did not do well until I addressed him as Economics graduate when he snapped in to ‘correct’ me that he studied business administration not Economics, I had no choice but to refer him to the CV he gave me. Oh! He exclaimed, “I am sorry I used my friend’s CV, I forgot to change the course of study”. Many job seekers inject their CVs with this kind of virus. Most times your person and background differ from the person whose CV you are adopting.

2. Unnecessary information: Fresh graduates are mostly guilty of this. Just to make sure their CV is ‘full’, they add "viruses" to it. Who says a one page CV cannot do better than two pages? What business of the recruiter is your home town or your religious denomination? He will find out those if he needs them before hiring you.

3. The‘Jokey’ email address: Yeah! The content of your email address matters. Trust me, nobody will be comfortable sending interview invitation to beerlover@yahoo.com or hotlips@gmail.com for a position. Check if your email address qualifies for ‘jockey’ one and rid your CV of that virus.

4. Incorrect/Insufficient Personal/Contact Details: While going through some CVs for the post of ICT manager many months ago, I saw a very good CV (a candidate with the requisite experience and skills for the job), I went back to the top of the CV to invite him for interview, lo and behold! His contact information was missing. Other job seekers carelessly miss a letter or sign in their email addresses. While yet another set omit a number or mix numbers up in their contact phone numbers. All these are bottle necks to invitations for interviews.

5. Design and format: I once saw a CV so nicely designed that I stopped for a while to look at the aesthetic value of the CV. Guess what? The aesthetics drew my attention away from the content of the CV and as such the owner missed the opportunity of having the content of his CV assessed. Similarly, some CVs are badly formatted (using different font style inappropriately) that one wonders if they were not actually designed to put the recruiter off. These are viruses to CVs.

6. Telling Lies in your CV: It is unfortunate that the competition in the labour market makes most job seeker stoop so low to the extent of putting false information in their CVs. Unfortunately for them, experienced HR professionals are good at identifying such lies.