Avoid making these 9 mistakes when writing your CV

Written by Andrew Fennell from StandOut CV

As a graduate, writing your CV can be challenging.

Learning what to include, how to format the CV and the correct structure takes a lot of research and effort. But knowing what to leave out of the CV and the biggest pitfalls to avoid can be just as important.

For example, it’s great to include plenty of information about your studies and volunteer work, but if you create a CV that’s too long, you risk it not being read in full by busy recruiters and hiring managers. Or similarly, if you fail to break up the text, and write your CV in big chunky paragraphs, you’re going to make it very difficult for readers to digest the information on the page, which could cause key points to be missed.

There are also lots of minor details that many candidates may overlook, that have a big impact on whether or not they get shortlisted for jobs. A common error amongst junior job seekers is branding the top of their CV with an embarrassing email address which they may have created in their school days (something like “badboyz4eva2000@hotmail.com). This may seem trivial, but it will ruin your credibility with a lot of recruiters and employers.

This infographic from StandOut CV walks you through the 9 most common CV mistakes, and how you can avoid them, to ensure you land plenty of interviews.