The things you should never put on your CV

Recruiters and Hiring Managers get sent stacks of CVs every day, so they learn quickly to discard the ones with red flags and things they loathe. Make sure your CV gets through the first sift by checking and eliminating the following CV misdemeanours.

• Personal Information - Avoid anything that could cause discrimination such as age, religion or political opinions. It’s also completely irrelevant to your ability and skill set. Nobody needs to know that you are healthy and a non-smoker either. The latter can potentially make you look confrontational. Your marriage status is also irrelevant to your employability. Stick to things that you can do, not what you are.
• Photograph - General opinion in the UK is that a photo on your CV makes you look weird right away and will often get you automatically discarded.
• Spelling Mistakes & Grammatical Errors - Its mind boggling how many CVs are sent covered in typos and haven’t been spell checked. Obviously, such lack of attention to detail and laziness does not make you attractive to potential employers.
• Hobbies & Interests – Always keep away from adding interests to your CV unless they are genuinely interesting or relevant to the role. Never just write a list of boring activities because socialising with friends, going to the gym and reading adds nothing.
• Negativity - Make sure not to bad mouth previous employers and avoid negative or aggressive language.
• References – These will be asked for once you’ve been offered and accepted a new role. Adding referee’s details to a CV will only cause them to get calls from recruiters.
• Old & Irrelevant Information – Always keep your employment history in detail to around ten years. Few people are still doing the same role a decade later so keep older roles to company, job title and dates employed. There’s also no need to add every bit of education and training because this becomes mostly irrelevant after time so listing your primary school and that Health & Safety course from 11 years ago is unnecessary.
• Lies – Absolutely not worth the risk and you shouldn’t do it in the first place. The combination of references, online testing and social media mean that most lies come to light. Most employers perform background searches so you’re likely to find your offer rescinded.
• Unprofessional email address – You need to lose your dodgy email address because it creates completely the wrong impression. It might have been amusing when you were a student but spliff_king76@hotmail.com and ragnarokthegnome@yahoo.co.uk are no longer working for you so get a more adult email.
• Graphics & Strange Fonts – Your CV has one function and that’s to convey to the reader that you are the best person for the job. Anything that distracts from that is a non-starter. Graphics and weird fonts distract the reader so are a bad idea. Recruiters also generally stay away from CVs that cannot be put easily into their sending format. Your CV should be in a traditional format with easily readable fonts such as arial or calibri.

A good CV is the best way to getting seen by a potential employer so it's important to spend some time tweaking yours and making sure you don't miss an opportunity.