by Glenn Hughes

Why Does My CV Keep Getting Rejected? A question a lot of people ask but don’t get any answers to. Of course you could phone and ask why you didn’t get an interview but the chances of you getting any information from the company that is useful are slim to none.

A CV is definitely not the place to express your particular brand of individuality. Avoid bright colours, cheap paper, crazy fonts and the like. If you are printing out your CV, print it out onto excellent quality paper, with matching envelope. Black print on a white or beige background is the norm- deviate from it at your absolute peril

A good strong personal profile or career objective paragraph at the top of your CV makes it easy for the reader to want to know more about you. In many case, it is enough to get your CV through that all important “first sift” and into the maybe pile. You have less than 30 seconds in which to make a favourable impression. Make sure that impression is positive and that you get through the first stage at the very least

If your CV is responsibility led rather than achievement led, you are almost bound to get your CV rejected. Employers expect you to have carried out your responsibilities- if you didn’t, what use are you to them. Achievements separate the wheat from the chaff- show what you have done for your past employers through your personal and team achievements

Stupid email addresses are another surprisingly common reason for CV rejection. You should include a sober email address, with perhaps your name and a few numbers in the address. Avoid anything racy, racist, sexy, funky, etc. in your email. Get yourself a boring email address and make sure that you check it frequently

Your hobbies are there to show how engaging you are as an individual, to add a little spice to your CV. Avoid inclusion of any hobbies or interests that could prejudice your application. Political party membership, membership of activist organisations and the like should be avoided. Enough spice to be interesting, sober enough to tell your grandmother perhaps brackets the accepted limits

Failure to read a job description thoroughly will get you rejected. The reason is that your cover letter should sell your experience and achievements to make sure that you tick all the boxes. If you want to, adapt your CV to the job in hand, perhaps a better way is to get a great cover letter written that gets you through the door. It makes all the difference in the world

Spelling the recipients name incorrectly will never stand you in good stead. Whilst this may be stating the obvious, you would be amazed at the number of times that I receive correspondence with my name spelled incorrectly. I never view this favourably, it never fails to annoy and I have rejected many CVs for this reason as it shows a lack of attention to detail

About the Author:
About the writer: Glenn Hughes is a cv marketer specialising in cv marketing for job seekers. CV marketing is one of the services provided by CV That Works