Quality of CV's

maxwell smart

I have been tasked with recruiting 3 sales people for the company I work for. I thought it would be easy in this climate, but after going through 125 CV's this morning only 2 are any use and even then its a bit of a reach for one of them.

If I can give some advice to people, when sending the CV have your name somewhere in the file name, don't just send the file named 'cv'.I had 27 of these this morning and nearly just deleted them, instead I renamed all of them to correspond with the sender.
And don't have it called 'Joe Bloggs sales jobs CV'... that's obvious that you are working the wording. People know you are anyway, just don't be so blatant.

And as a contact email address, perhaps have a think before you put your regular one in...'jenniehotstuff@whatever' gives a certain impression!!

Also, do people even look at the job they are applying for? Try to send a relevant CV.

The length of the CV needs to be 2-3 pages maximum. And the font, please pick something simple and plain.

And personally I don't like .PDF CV's but that is just me.

Also, please, please, please check both the grammar and the spelling. There is no excuse with spell check.

Hopefully some of these points will help you look at your own CV and improve it a little.

jimmy rabbit snr.

maxwell smart wrote: »

I have been tasked with recruiting 3 sales people for the company I work for. I thought it would be easy in this climate, but after going through 125 CV's this morning only 2 are any use and even then its a bit of a reach for one of them.

If I can give some advice to people, when sending the CV have your name somewhere in the file name, don't just send the file named 'cv'.I had 27 of these this morning and nearly just deleted them, instead I renamed all of them to correspond with the sender.
And don't have it called 'Joe Bloggs sales jobs CV'... that's obvious that you are working the wording. People know you are anyway, just don't be so blatant.

And as a contact email address, perhaps have a think before you put your regular one in...'jenniehotstuff@whatever' gives a certain impression!!

Also, do people even look at the job they are applying for? Try to send a relevant CV.

The length of the CV needs to be 2-3 pages maximum. And the font, please pick something simple and plain.

And personally I don't like .PDF CV's but that is just me.

Also, please, please, please check both the grammar and the spelling. There is no excuse with spell check.

Hopefully some of these points will help you look at your own CV and improve it a little.

what kind of sales jobs and location

maxwell smart

New Product Launch based in Dublin

Mill21

Thanks for the advice, I'm a Business and French graduate looking for a Marketing or Sales job. I assume that you will be looking for someone with several years experience as seems to be the case with most jobs I'm seeing available in Ireland. However if you open to looking at graduates pm me.

Ps. Totally agree with some bad CVs. I worked for a recruitment agency in Paris and the amount of bad CVs was ridulous from a range of nationalites, but if you think irish and european ones are bad see some of the indian ones!

jimmy rabbit snr.

in store selling door 2 door or b2b

maxwell smart

b2b

fasttalkerchat

I got my CV down to one page for applying for part time retail jobs. I'm starting to think I condensed it too much.

fergalr

(Came across this from the main page).

maxwell smart wrote: »

And personally I don't like .PDF CV's but that is just me.

I'm surprised at this. Is this a frequent perception? I'd have advised people that PDF was a good format to submit a CV in.

maxwell smart wrote: »

Also, please, please, please check both the grammar and the spelling. There is no excuse with spell check.

Spell checkers unfortunately do not catch everything.
Its worth reading over a list of common grammar errors.

E.g. This website:
http://www.caterer.com/careers-advice/cvs/8-common-grammar-mistakes-on-cvs-and-cover-letters

talks about common grammar mistakes on CVs and cover letters.

Incidentally, number 4 on the list says its supposed to be 'CVs'.

maxwell smart

Regarding the .PDF thing, its a personal thing. The main issue I have with it is downloading them to my laptop to review, they automatically open before I can save them. Also the format means that they will not look like the other CV's...it really is personal though.

So it should be 'CVs'? well I was talking more about something like this 'daily tasks where to visit the clients we where Supping to a.....' just an example

murphym7

maxwell smart wrote: »

Regarding the .PDF thing, its a personal thing. The main issue I have with it is downloading them to my laptop to review, they automatically open before I can save them. Also the format means that they will not look like the other CV's...it really is personal though.

So it should be 'CVs'? well I was talking more about something like this 'daily tasks where to visit the clients we where Supping to a.....' just an example

We all dislike PDF's in our place too - I echo most of your points on CV creation too.

On cover letters, this is me personally though, I do not read them. especially for high volume roles like this one you are recruiting for. I am not going to read 100 cover letters and 100 CV’s. This is not advice by the way, just my personal preference.

Atomic Pineapple

Wait, so you would prefer a CV in .doc format over a .pdf format?

RedXIV

I actually remember that from years ago, getting told to send your CV as a .PDF AND as a .doc so the interviewer can choose which to look at but I thought it would be overkill. perhaps not by the sounds of this?

listermint

Quite surprised by the PDF and .Doc thing tbh. I suppose its more down to the ability of the receiver. If they are comfortable with certain formats on their desktop/laptop little things that dont mean much in the real world can annoy.

Best bet is x2

Gurgle

Quality of CV's

Good old grocer's apostrophe
It actually types itself in any post relating to punctuation.

re: docs vs pdfs
I'm really surprised that anyone would rather get a doc, considering how formats get screwed up between different versions of word.

maxwell smart

I prefer .doc format as I am (now) an old codger (almost).

Eoin

When you're dealing with an agency, they're probably going to want .doc so they can slap their logo over your contact details so the company has to go through the agency.

Personally I don't really mind PDF, because I had the cop on to install an alternative to Adobe Acrobloat reader which doesn't take up an inordinate amount of memory.

Some HR staff might have a process of copying and pasting sections of CVs into some sort of internal recruitment form and PDFs can be a pain for that. Or they might not be that technically literate and it might annoy them. There's worse things you can do to annoy someone viewing CVs though.

As an aside, if formatting across different versions of Word is an issue, then your CV layout probably needs to be simplified.

maxwell smart

Switching between pdf and doc would not normally annoy me, but when you get (as of now) 250 CV's (i'm sticking with that apostrophe now:D) it becomes a pain.
It was really just some advice for anyone applying for a job, the sheer volume of applications for jobs these days needs to be taken into account by people applying. I am reading every CV, would anyone else if they had to make the effort of switching between formats?

jd83

At least with a pdf your guaranteed that the document you send will look the same when the receiver opens it. I know usually word docs are fine, but sometime if the receiver is using an older version of office or using open office, or not too good with a computer and opens it arseways it can open and the formatting can be messed up which can reflect poorly on the applicant even though its not their fault.

banie01

fergalr wrote: »

(Came across this from the main page).



I'm surprised at this. Is this a frequent perception? I'd have advised people that PDF was a good format to submit a CV in.

Speaking as someone who has worked in recruitment, .pdf format CV's are a nightmare!
While its good for printing and actual viewing in hardcopy, its a pain for database management using the software most Irish recruiters use, also online talent management pipelines such as taleo and ICIMS don't work well with .pdf.
Most recruitment database search software works on boolean search and apart from 1 software package I've used none could search .pdf documents on the database.
Whenever I received .pdf CVs i would always mail back and request a .doc/word compatible version so that I could add it to my database and have it searchable.

To the OP I totally agree with you, the standard of 70% of the CVs I see is laughably poor, particularly with IT grads!
Its as if they seem to assume that because they have a degree they don't need to actually sell themselves and their skillset.

theholyghost

maxwell smart wrote: »

Also, please, please, please check both the grammar and the spelling. There is no excuse with spell check.

This disturbs me, the OP doesn't know how to use an apostrophe or how to pluralise "CV" but is going to judge someone's suitability for a job based on their grammar. I'm not having a go at the OP in particular but it bothers me a bit that someone applying for a job might give a poor first impression despite being correct because their potential employer is labouring under some grammatical misconceptions.

Again, I'm not aiming this at the OP per se but you never know what the person who reads your CV "thinks".

Raekwon

When I'm job hunting I always send both a .pdf & .doc CV just to give receiver the preference of the format that they are used too.

I used to always send a .pdf as my was CV was formatted with tables and it used to look awful on older versions of word or open office. I actually started to receive emails back from HR telling me that they couldn't open my CV and to send them a word doc instead.

The one thing that I hated about word docs is when recruiters would edit them before passing it on to a company. I remember once a recruiter took some important information out of my CV because they wanted to fit it all on one page. I only found this out at an interview but luckily I had a few spare copies of the original which the interviewer described as being "much better".

maxwell smart

theholyghost wrote: »

This disturbs me, the OP doesn't know how to use an apostrophe or how to pluralise "CV" but is going to judge someone's suitability for a job based on their grammar. I'm not having a go at the OP in particular but it bothers me a bit that someone applying for a job might give a poor first impression despite being correct because their potential employer is labouring under some grammatical misconceptions.

Again, I'm not aiming this at the OP per se but you never know what the person who reads your CV "thinks".

To be pedantic about the whole 'CV' thing, the actual correct plural is CV, as it is Latin.
But I wouldn't be too bothered about a misplaced apostrophe or comma, its the way people use the language in describing their experience.

im invisible

it's actually acceptable either way, in things like 90's, CVs etc.

Eoin

Let's not turn this into a big pedantic argument please. There's other forums for that. And yes, I said forums not fora. maxwell smart has made some good points, regardless of whether the apostrophe should be there or not.

Anyway, keep the formatting simple, and the word doc should be backwards / cross platform compatible.

maxwell smart makes a good point. The more CVs you're dealing with, the less time you have to make decisions. This means that it takes less to make annoy the person vetting them. As I said, it doesn't bother me, but it might bother others. The filename is a simple but good idea too.

What personally annoys me is CVs that are a massive wall of text. Use an extra page and/or trim down the text please. It felt like getting slapped in the face by a page from a dictionary. This is probably a bit irrational, but I absolutely hate reading documents that use Times New Roman. It's designed for print. You can't go wrong with Arial IMO.

fasttalkerchat

maxwell smart wrote: »

To be pedantic about the whole 'CV' thing, the actual correct plural is CV, as it is Latin.

Oh, well spotted!

phoenix999

maxwell smart wrote: »

To be pedantic about the whole 'CV' thing, the actual correct plural is CV, as it is Latin.
But I wouldn't be too bothered about a misplaced apostrophe or comma, its the way people use the language in describing their experience.

Spot on. The correct plural term is "Curricula Vitae". So both "CV's" and "CVs" are incorrect.

fergalr

phoenix999 wrote: »

Spot on. The correct plural term is "Curricula Vitae". So both "CV's" and "CVs" are incorrect.

I think 'CVs' is fine - as its used 'CV' is basically a singular English word in common use.

You'd have to be pretty hardcore to use 'Curricula Vitae', but whatever works, as long as the meaning is clear, I guess!




curricula vitarum

Eoin

Eoin wrote: »

Let's not turn this into a big pedantic argument please.

*ahem*

maxwell smart

I started this thread to try to tell people that there are jobs out there and employers are willing to give people a chance, but people looking for work have to maximise their own chances when applying for jobs.
These are mistakes I see all the time, but they are unnecessary mistakes.

At least give yourself a chance when applying for a position.

fasttalkerchat

Eoin wrote: »

*ahem*

I see your point about not wanting an argument and usually Grammar Nazis piss me off too, but spelling and grammar are an important part of a CV!

gandalf

Are you looking for any more CV's to add to the pile