The Most Common Mistake Jobseekers Make In Their CV

A simple reframing can make you more attractive to potential employers, and give you a self-esteem boost while you write it

Hi, I am Raluca and for the last four years, a big part of my job for the charity Work Rights Centre has been employability mentoring: helping jobseekers escape the cycle of precarity and bad jobs by supporting them to find better work. Teaching people how to write an effective, eye-catching CV is often the first step.

Very often, when people draft their CV, in the job history section, they start writing something like this:

January 2016- January 2020: Chocolate Teapot Communications Executive

• Managing an email list;
• Responsible for communication with external stakeholders
• Providing customer service to our clients

Basically, your description of the job, in your CV, looks about the same as the listing for the job that you applied for back when you were hired; it talks about what your job description, as set by your employer, looked like.

And we don’t want that. What really compels employers, instead, is seeing your achievements. In other words, what you need to do is make the description about you, rather than about the job.

Do you know what your achievements look like?

For many jobseekers, this is the tricky bit. We’re often taught to be grounded and humble; no one likes credit-snatching obnoxious braggadocio, right? But now you have to write a CV and…well, bragging a bit is kind of its purpose. This is why writing a CV can often feel like a profoundly awkward experience.

This is particularly hard for those of us who are leaving toxic jobs or bad managers: if your current employer constantly tells you that you are worthless and bad at your job, how are you going to convince your next job that you are brilliant?

If you’re not sure where to start, start with these questions:

• Think about how you do your job. Now think about how a mediocre person who only does the bare minimum would do it. What is the difference between you and that person?
• What impact did you have on your employer’s business, your coworkers, or your clients? What happened (or was prevented from happening) because you did your job well?
• What qualities did you demonstrate over the course of your job? How do these qualities look like in practice?
• What was hard about your job and how did you solve it?

With these in mind, this is how you can revamp your job description:

January 2016- January 2020: Chocolate Teapot Communications Executive

• Increased email subscribers by providing engaging content within tight deadlines.
• Communicated with external stakeholders effectively, ensuring projects were always delivered on time
• Provided an excellent level of customer service to our clients, demonstrating sensitivity and diplomacy. Built reputation for working successfully with previously unhappy clients, receiving excellent reviews.

This is better than what we started with, but there is still one more really powerful thing we can do.

Make your achievements concrete and measurable:

Now that we have our achievements pinned down, it’s time to make them really persuasive.

Think about it from the perspective of a recruiter reviewing hundreds and hundreds of CVs: anyone off the street can come and say: “Oh, I am a very hard worker, with excellent attention to detail and business acumen, and I would totally make a great addition to your company!”.

How do you think employers can tell the difference between someone who really has those qualities, and someone who is just saying so because that’s the kind of buzzwords you are expected to throw at a CV?

This, again, is about how you write your achievements.

Think about how your success could be measured. What metrics would you use to describe it and to give someone a feel of what your work entailed?

Let’s rephrase the job description again:

January 2016- January 2020: Chocolate Teapot Communications Executive

• Increased email subscribers by 20 percent in six months by providing engaging content within tight deadlines.
• Communicated with external stakeholders effectively, handling over 50 calls a day, ensuring projects were always delivered on time.
• Provided an excellent level of customer service to our clients, demonstrating sensitivity and diplomacy. Built reputation for working successfully with previously unhappy clients, receiving over 95% positive feedback and no formal complaints.

And just like this, a potential employer now knows a lot more about what you’re like as a worker!