How to avoid mistakes when writing your CV

A CV is your opportunity to make an important first impression on your potential future employer; it is very important therefore, you take time to avoid simple mistakes that would stop you from being short-listed for an interview, even if you have the right credentials for the job.

- Grammatical errors

The most important mistake that you can make when writing a CV or Curriculum Vitae is to have spelling and grammatical errors. Having such mistakes will present you in bad light as either someone that does not care about presentation or worse, not capable of performing in the job.

- Avoid jazzing up your CV

Do not make the mistake of making your CV look glaringly different from the norm. Making it look all jazzed up and different won't impress them at all. In fact, by making it look too different from the norm will appear that you were trying too hard, and jazzing up a CV was an attempt at attracting their attention.

It is the content and not how it is presented that's important. Make your CV a standard copy. There is enough scope to impress them with your written word in the covering letter.

- Avoid lying

Do not flatter yourself – Although most people get way with some flattery by improvising their CV's skilfully to make it appear or sound better than your actual skills and experience would suggest, which can often make difference between being short-listed for an interview or being ignored, it can be a serious mistake to make up blatant lies. Sooner or later, you will get found out.

- Know the role and the organization

Find out as much as you can about the organization and know the role you apply for – If you make statements on your CV about the role, confident of what it entails and how it matches up well to experience that you have, only to find later that the requirements of the job is actually somewhat different to what you thought can you greatly harm your chances of landing an interview.

- Make the CV specific to the job you are applying for

All too often job hunters make the mistake of applying for different jobs using a templated CV. In order to save time, they fire off the same CV to lots of different employers, hoping the more unique covering letter will differentiate the applications. Unfortunately, people in the human resource department dealing with recruitment go through a ton of CVs and have the knack of identifying such CVs.

A lot of people do not read responsibilities assumed with the role of the post. This leads them to send in a CV that is not always consistent with requirements of the job.

Do not cram your CV with information. It is important to be selective in stating your achievements, and written in a brief, yet very persuasively rather than providing your entire life/work history. If it looks too crammed they are unlikely to read though it.

- Check and recheck your CV

After you have completed the CV, you should go through it with meticulous care as you only get one chance when applying for a job with an organization. By doing this you can be confident that you have done everything possible to be in with a chance of progressing further.