24 Apr 2023
There are always lots of different opinions about what you should and shouldn’t include on your new CV. We have a few more thoughts to share:
Photographs: As people with years of experience in recruitment, we think selfies should not typically go onto your CV. Recruiters will (even if they try and deny it) form a personal judgement about you and your character once they’ve seen your mug-shot. Once that judgement has been formed it can typically detract from the important information about what you can actually do. On that basis, it’s a “don’t” from us.
Home addresses: It’s another no from us. It should be fine to give your hometown or county, but please don’t broadcast your personal information like this on your CV. Many people post their CVs onto public forums, and hey presto, thousands of people could suddenly be looking at your house on Google Earth.
The time to give your home address is when individual recruiters ask for it, but not before then. This is basic sensibility surrounding your own personal security. You have no idea who may have access to your CV and your personal information.
Dates of birth: Nope, not this one either. Again recruiters will happily judge you on your age, and can use that judgement to make a decision about your ‘team fit’, or your ability to grapple with modern technology.
If they want to discriminate on the basis of age, we shouldn’t make it easy for them. Granted they could probably work out a rough age for you, but only if they really want to.
Fancy fonts: we have seen red and blue CVs, in bold italics and ancient fonts. Whilst to some it might look colourful and creative, to recruiters it generally implies your judgement might be a little impaired if you think having a multi-coloured résumé in hieroglyphics will get you far. Just don’t do it.
Training: Job specific, or even generic training should be included on your CV, especially when it’s relevant for the job(s) you are applying for. However, including every single workshop / training day / team building event since you left school 20 years ago isn’t the best approach. Keep this information restricted to what the recruiters will want to know about you – relevant, current and valuable.
And finally for today’s blog……
Referees: It’s important that recruiters know who they have to contact to make sure you are worthy of the job, but our advice is only to give these out on request rather than including them in a CV as a matter of course. This way you can be sure if and when your referees will be approached. We’ve seen it in the past where referees have been approached before any offer has been made, and sadly that’s led to some uncomfortable situations.
Where you can, you want to be sure that you’ve told a referee they may be approached, so at least they can give some thought about what they should say.
