Trying to get a job? Guide on what NOT to do. Part I

Being a recruitment manager is part of my job. What does that mean in practice? That I have to say no to lots of applicants.

Put in numbers, for each position I have to fill I will receive around 50 applications and we will interview around 10 of them. That means that I have to reject 4 out of every 5 applicants based on their CV. And that’s the focus of this post.

What is the purpose of the curriculum vitae then? It is not to describe to the last detail of every position you’ve held. It is not a collection of meaningless acronyms. The purpose to cause such impression that the recruiter wants to meet you.

There are several ways to fail there. If the following questions/thoughts pop into my head when going through an application… bad sign.

Why are you applying?

Now there are several ways to solve that. You can enclose a cover letter, or write your motivation in the same email where you attach your CV. You can even write your motivation in the CV itself.

You need to introduce yourself and make it interesting. A factual list won’t do that.

Who sent me this!?

Funny addresses like funnyboy_xxx69@veryhotmail.com or lordoftheshadows@mordor.com don’t inspire lots of trust. It is easy, and free, to get proper email addresses and I can tolerate numbers.

john.smith1988321@geemail.com is ok. Lucky dude the first John Smith to land a google account!

To whom are you writing?

Don’t misspell the name of the company where you’re applying to. It is not much different from a neon sign saying “I don’t care about you guys!”.

I can’t breathe!

Don’t write…. unreadable-text-that-it-is-very-long-and-there-are-no-pauses-and-all-the-stuff-is-explained-in-there-but-it-is-impossible-to-get-a-good-picture-and-it-is-so-long-that-the-one-paragraph-uses-the-full-page-with-single-spacing-and-font-eight-and-there-are-almost-no-comas-or-dots-so-it-is-very-difficult-to-read-to-the-point-of-loosing-your-breath-and-faint.

You don’t want to give them a headache, do you?

…that’s it?

I had an applicant who wrote: ”I meet the requirements. I want 2500,00€/month, after taxes”.

That was it, nothing else, no CV, no information. If there’s nothing to tell, probably there’s nothing that I want to hear about either.

Oh no… another one

You need to make your CV stand out. Three pages with the same font, all black and white, all same size, booooriiiiiing.  Add a picture, add some colours, have a decent layout. Remember, you’re trying to get my attention.

Why didn’t he send me a PDF?

When I open a MS Word file, the first thing I want to do is edit it: it’s the same with your CV. A plain text (yes, *.txt) file is as ugly and boring as it gets. Wow, that dude send me a zip file! What is he sending so that he needs to zip it, really?

Eight pages, really!?

One page is ideal. Two are acceptable. You need very good reasons to go beyond that. I don’t understand a 22 year old undergraduate with an 8 page CV. Nor I want to read through all the details of all your projects of your career. That will bore me, so I won’t be interested, so we won’t meet. Too bad.

Try to avoid the recruiters from getting those thoughts when reading your CV and applications, and while I can’t guarantee you and interview, you’ll have a better shot!