You may think God is on your side but he doesn’t give job references!
Umbrella company contractors thinking of revamping their CVs may be interested to learn about some of the crazy things other people have included in their all important document.
Just putting your name, phone number and “I want a job” on your CV is guaranteed to make prospective employers file your missive under ‘B’ for bin. That is just one of the examples Careerbuilder.co.uk discovered when they conducted a recent survey.
Other gaffes included lion taming as a hobby, sending an application from a lovesbeer email address and listing “Master of Time and Universe” under experience. The most ridiculous however, has to be the person who named the Almighty under references, and strangely enough, omitted a phone number.
194 UK employers were surveyed and 32% of them admitted to spending one minute or less looking through a CV. 14% said they spend less than half a minute on the task. Lying on CVs still continues with 23% of employers saying they detected an untruth in the last 12 months.
The employers were also asked what made them automatically discard a candidate looking for employment. Spelling and typos are a major bugbear but employers also do not like CVs that take up three or more pages, CVs that are not customized to the advertised position, applications without a covering letter and those stating an unprofessional email address.
The survey respondents also stated skill set phrases they looked favourably upon when scanning CVs. 68% are looking for communication skills, followed closely by problem-solving skills at 62%. Computer software skills and experience in leadership, customer retention and project management ranked highly amongst the other attributes named by employers.
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Image: 176/365 No God? No problem. by stuartpilbrow
