10 MOST COMMON CV MISTAKES

We, at the Youth Employment Africa (YEA), recently requested for CVs from young people which we reviewed in order to identify common mistakes and propose ways of improvement.

The project was a preliminary process of setting up a section, with support from volunteers, to assist young people in CV writing and also provide creation and job search ideas to those interested and are in need.

We received CVs from a total of 32 young people (14 female) from 3 nationalities; Kenya (29), Zambia (1) and Rwanda (2). In terms of education levels, 24 had completed undergraduate studies, 2 had a master’s and 6 had diplomas. The age range was 23–36 years.

Below are some of the key observations made from the CVs. (We will post suggestions for improvement later. We are going to share with each one who made a submission the specific observations on their CVs and work with them to improve and make them more marketable);

1. Careless and unprofessional FORMATTING or layout with avoidable mistakes including spelling among others.

2. Unnecessarily LONG CVs with some irrelevant info. The desire to include everything and careless listing.

3. UNNECESSARY PERSONAL DETAILS

4. Confusion about what PERSONAL/CAREER PROFILE is and making it quite general and not adapted.

5. ENUMERATING all the UNITS studied under education

6. ROLES not provided nor ACCOMPLISHMENTS clear. One had no experience completely. Too many listed roles which looked like they were just picked from job descriptions

7. IRRELEVANT INTEREST AND HOBBIES which may jeopardize success. Little or no thought about what to include.

8. Not carefully selecting REFEREES and having people who do not add much weight or significance. For example only academic referees such as head teacher who doesn’t know much about your field experience.

9. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION which do not add value.

10. LIES and the academic sin of COPY PASTING without even trying to adapt the information.