CV mistakes worth fixing

Most CV advice is a list of thirty things you are doing wrong. In practice a small number of problems account for most rejections, and they are all fixable in an evening.

1. It could belong to anyone

The single most common problem. If you could hand your CV to a colleague in the same role and they would only need to change the name, it is describing the job rather than you. Fix it in the bullets: add what changed because you were there.

2. Contact details that do not work

An old phone number, an email address you no longer read, or contact details tucked into a page header where a parser will never find them. Check them, and put them in the body of the page.

3. The wrong file

Send a PDF unless the form asks for a Word document, and name it something a stranger can find again — Firstname-Lastname-CV.pdf, not cv_final_v3_USE_THIS.pdf. If you cannot select the text in your own PDF, no applicant tracking system can read it either.

4. Length, in both directions

Three pages usually means it has not been edited. Half a page usually means the interesting parts were left out. Two pages is right for most people; one page for early careers.

5. Typos, and the dates not adding up

Read it out loud — you will hear what you cannot see. Then check the dates in sequence. An overlap or an unexplained two-year gap makes a reader stop trusting the document, which is a much bigger problem than the gap itself.