Job search is a process where every little aspect can either contribute to your success or ruin your chances of landing your dream job. Your CV is the first impression a prospective employer will get about you, so it needs to be absolutely flawless. Here are 7 things that should not be featured on your CV.
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1. Corporate email address
If you have a job but want to find a better one, you are not alone, as thousands of people in Nigeria want to improve their career by switching to another position. A big mistake in this situation is to use your corporate email address in your CV. First, it tells your prospective employer that you do personal business on company time. Second, your current employer can easily access your email and find out about your plans sooner than you are ready to share them.
Read more: How To Write A CV In Nigeria
2. Irrelevant job experience
When you are looking for a new job, you are tempted to include every single job experience you’ve ever had. However, this is not a good idea for two reasons. First, it takes valuable CV space, which should ideally be under 2 pages long. Second, a job you had 10 years ago as a bartender does not tell anything about your qualification for a job in marketing.
3. An objective
A few years ago, high-quality CVs always started with an objective, but this practice is no longer recommended by the recruiters. Instead, you can summarize your qualifications and experience on top of your resume, and leave the description of your career goals for your cover letter that you will attach to the resume when applying for a job.
4. Common or outdated skills
There was a time when you could easily impress any recruiter or potential employer with the information on your resume that you know Microsoft Office and can operate a fax machine. However, in 2021, those and similar skills should not be present on your resume: fax machines are now mostly a thing of the past and any person with a computer and corporate job experience can successfully use Microsoft Office.
Read more: 12 Mistakes In Your Resume To Avoid
5. Long paragraphs
When creating your CV, you want it to be as informative and beneficial to your job prospects as possible, but it’s also important to keep it short and concise. On average, a recruiter spends less than 10 seconds when looking at a CV for the first time, which is why long paragraphs and multiple pages of text won’t do you any good. Whenever possible, use bulleted lists where each item is no longer than two lines.
6. Untrue information
You’d think that job seekers know better than to include outright lies in their CVs, but you will be surprised how many of them actually put untrue or partially true information there. You should remember that in this day and age, a prospective employer is able to verify any information on your CV, so if you want to add a degree you never actually obtained or a job experience at a company you’ve never worked for, the truth will come out eventually.
7. References
Unless the job description specifically asks for references to be included in your CV, you should not even allocate a separate line for references or write the phrase “References available upon request” because it’s such an obvious thing. In the rare case that an employer does actually need your references, they will tell you about it at the later stages of the job seeking process – for example, before the final interview or job offer.
Read more: How To Get A Job In Canada From Nigeria
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