Mistake 1 — A generic objective statement at the top
"Seeking a challenging role in a dynamic organisation where I can grow my skills and contribute to company success." This sentence, and every variant of it, is the most common waste of prime CV real estate. Objective statements were standard practice in the 1990s; in modern hiring, they signal that the candidate hasn't updated their CV approach in decades — or that they're using a template without thinking.
The space at the top of your CV is the highest-value real estate on the document. Replace the objective statement with a professional summary that does actual work: names your expertise, leads with your most relevant experience for this role, quantifies something, and uses the vocabulary this hiring manager expects. "Growth marketing lead with 6 years scaling B2B SaaS products. Grew ARR from $800k to $4.2M across two companies through performance and lifecycle channels." That's information a hiring manager can use. "Seeking a challenging role" is not.
If you're a career changer and feel the need to explain the transition, you can use the summary to do that briefly and explicitly: "Software engineer with 4 years in fintech moving into product management. Built and shipped 3 consumer-facing features, led sprint planning for a 6-person team, and co-authored the product roadmap for our payments integration." That's a career-change summary that works. Even then: make it about what you bring, not what you're seeking.
Mistake 2 — Sending a CV in the wrong file format
Submitting your CV as a JPEG, PNG, or Pages file is an immediate problem. These formats either cannot be parsed by ATS software at all (images) or are not readable by Windows-based systems without conversion (Pages files from Mac's native word processor). The ATS will log a failed parse and the recruiter will either skip your application or spend time trying to open a file they didn't expect.
For most modern applications, PDF is the right choice. It preserves your formatting exactly as you designed it, it's readable on every device and operating system, and it parses cleanly in all major ATS platforms provided it's a text-based PDF (not a scan). For applications where the posting explicitly asks for DOCX, submit DOCX — but use the clean single-column format guidelines rather than a complex layout that might reflow in the hiring manager's version of Word.
A subtler version of this mistake: submitting a PDF that is actually a scan of a printed document. Scanned PDFs contain images of text, not actual characters. Even high-resolution scans are unreliably parsed by ATS OCR engines and produce garbled extractions. If you've been given a legacy CV as a scanned PDF, retype it. The 30 minutes it takes to retype is worth more than any number of applications submitted in a format that won't parse.
Mistake 3 — Missing or mismatched keywords
As covered in detail elsewhere in this blog, keyword mismatch with the job description is the primary mechanism by which qualified candidates get rejected before a human reads their CV. The ATS scores your submission against the recruiter's search parameters — if those parameters include "Python," "agile project management," and "enterprise B2B sales," and your CV says "scripting," "Scrum-based delivery," and "complex sales cycles," you may be talking about the same skills but scoring poorly on the match.
The fix is systematic: read the job description as if you're a search engine. Extract every concrete skill, technology, methodology, and role-specific term. Check each one against your CV. Where you have the genuine experience but have described it in different language, update your language to match — without changing the accuracy of what you're claiming. Do this for the top 10–15 keywords in any given job description before submitting.
One nuance: don't only focus on the "required skills" section of a job description. Job descriptions are written by humans who embed priority signals throughout the text. A phrase that appears in the opening paragraph, in the responsibilities section, and in the requirements section is signalling that it's a central concern for this role. A phrase that appears only once in the "nice to have" section is lower priority. Adjust your keyword emphasis accordingly.
Mistake 4 — Formatting that breaks ATS parsing
Multi-column layouts, tables, text boxes, headers and footers containing important information, and custom fonts all create parsing problems for ATS software. The specific failure modes vary by platform: some ATS systems ignore content inside tables entirely; others collapse it into a single line without spaces, producing garbled text. Headers and footers are frequently excluded from the parsed text field because the ATS treats them as navigation elements rather than content.
The practical consequence: a hiring manager opens your ATS candidate record and sees your contact details missing (they were in the footer), your most recent job appearing after an older one (the ATS couldn't identify the dates in a table cell), or your name and job title merged into a single unparseable string. You look like an incomplete application even though you submitted a beautifully designed document.
Single-column, standard-section-heading CVs avoid all of these issues. They can still look polished — thoughtful typography, good whitespace, clear visual hierarchy — without relying on layout tricks that confuse parsers. If you work in a design or creative field and feel strongly that your CV should visually showcase your design sense, consider maintaining two versions: one visually rich version for direct human submission (portfolio reviews, studio applications), and one clean parse-safe version for ATS-based portals.
Mistake 5 — Typos and grammatical errors
This should be obvious, but it bears stating: typos and grammatical errors in a CV are rejection signals at multiple levels. For many hiring managers, they're a filter for attention to detail — if a candidate can't proofread a document they've had unlimited time to review, what does that suggest about the quality of their work output? For ATS systems, a misspelled keyword is a missed keyword — "Pyhton" doesn't match "Python."
The insidious thing about typos in your own documents is that your brain autocorrects them as you read. You wrote "manger" instead of "manager" in your second bullet point, but you've read this document 40 times and your brain fills in the correct word automatically. The recruiter's brain doesn't make that correction. To catch typos in your own writing, read the document backwards (forcing your brain to process each word in isolation), use a spell-checker (but verify its suggestions rather than accepting them all blindly), and ideally have a trusted person read it fresh.
Common CV-specific errors beyond spelling: inconsistent tense (mixing past and present tense in the same experience entry), inconsistent date formats across entries, inconsistent capitalisation of job titles or company names, and mismatched punctuation in bullet lists (some ending with periods, some not). These are rarely caught by spell-checkers because they're technically valid English — they just look inconsistent.
Mistake 6 — Including a photo (in the US and UK) or omitting one (in Germany and parts of Asia)
Photo conventions vary so dramatically by geography that including or omitting a photo can be a significant signal of your familiarity with local professional norms — in either direction.
In the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, including a headshot on your CV is not standard practice and can actively work against you. US and Canadian employers are legally constrained from making hiring decisions based on appearance, age, race, or gender — seeing a photo creates liability and many hiring managers will discard a CV that includes one to avoid any suggestion that such factors influenced their decision. In the UK, the norm shifted against photos partly for the same anti-discrimination reasons. There is no upside to including a photo in these markets; the downside risk is real.
In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and many parts of East and Southeast Asia (Japan, South Korea, China), a professional headshot is expected and its absence can make your application look incomplete. In Germany, the photo convention is so established that CV templates on major job sites include a photo slot as standard. If you're applying to roles in these markets without a photo, you may be inadvertently signalling that you're not familiar with local conventions. Research the specific norms for your target geography before submitting.
Mistake 7 — Outdated or unprofessional contact information
Your contact information seems like the easiest section to get right, and yet it's a surprisingly common source of problems. The most common issue is an outdated phone number — candidates update their CV without updating the number, and when a recruiter tries to call them, they reach a disconnected line or the wrong person. Always verify your phone number is current before sending any application.
Email addresses deserve specific attention. A professional email address is your name or a close variant at a mainstream provider (Gmail, Outlook, ProtonMail). An email address that includes your birth year (showing your age), a nickname or internet handle, or a defunct student email address that might become inactive all send unintended signals. If your current email address is something like "[email protected]," create a new professional address for job applications — it takes five minutes and matters.
LinkedIn profile links are increasingly expected in professional CVs, especially in the US and UK tech and finance sectors. If you include a LinkedIn URL, make sure your LinkedIn profile is current, consistent with your CV, and has a professional photo. Inconsistencies between your CV and LinkedIn — different job titles, different dates, experience that appears on one but not the other — raise questions that would never arise if recruiters didn't check both. They do check both. Keep them consistent.
Mistake 8 — Missing or ambiguous employment dates
Employment dates serve two purposes on a CV: they tell the reader how long you've been doing something (seniority signal), and they reveal gaps in your employment history (which hiring managers will ask about regardless). Omitting dates entirely, or using ambiguous formats like "2019–2022" without months for multiple consecutive roles, makes it impossible for reviewers to assess either of these things accurately — and ATS systems may fail to parse your experience timeline at all.
Use consistent month-year formats: "Jan 2021 — Mar 2023" or "03/2021 — 09/2022" throughout the document. If you were employed for less than a year in a role, include months — "Jun 2023 — Oct 2023" is clear, while "2023–2023" looks like an error. For your current role, "Jan 2024 — Present" is correct.
Employment gaps are less stigmatised than they were a decade ago, and most recruiters have seen and accepted gaps for caregiving, health, education, career transition, travel, and other reasons. Trying to obscure gaps by omitting months (so a gap of 8 months looks like a gap of 0 months when only years are shown) will be caught in a conversation — and being caught in a deliberate obscuration is worse than the gap itself. If you have a gap, be prepared to explain it briefly and positively. You don't need to explain it in the CV; you do need to explain it in the interview.
Mistake 9 — Lying or embellishing
Misrepresenting experience, inflating job titles, claiming skills you don't have, or exaggerating the scope of your responsibilities is the highest-risk mistake on this list — not because it's more common than others, but because the consequences extend beyond not getting the job.
Background verification is standard practice for any professional role above entry level. Employment verification checks will confirm your job titles and dates of employment with your former employers. Reference conversations will expose claims about your responsibilities and achievements that your references don't corroborate. Technical interviews will surface claimed skills you can't demonstrate. In regulated industries (finance, medicine, law, aviation, defence), falsifying application materials can result in professional disqualification, legal liability, and permanent reputational damage.
Beyond the practical risks, fabricated experience creates a specific performance problem: you may be hired for a role based on experience you don't have, which means you'll be expected to operate at a level you haven't developed. This is more stressful than it sounds. The ethical and practical alignment is unusually strong here — representing yourself accurately is not just morally correct but strategically correct. A well-tailored, truthful CV that clearly communicates your genuine strengths will get you into roles where you can actually succeed.
Mistake 10 — A generic skills section with no context
The skills section at the bottom of a CV is simultaneously one of the most ATS-important sections (it's where many candidates' keyword matches land) and one of the most human-reader-useless sections. A list that reads "Microsoft Office, PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Outlook, Teamwork, Communication, Leadership, Problem-Solving, Analytical" tells a hiring manager nothing useful and tells an ATS very little about depth or context.
For technical skills, specificity matters: "Excel (pivot tables, VLOOKUP, data validation)" is more informative than just "Excel." "Python (data analysis with pandas and matplotlib, scripting for automation)" tells the reader something about how you use the skill, not just that it exists on your CV. For soft skills, the consensus among hiring professionals is that listing "leadership" or "communication" without any evidence in your experience bullets is almost meaningless — any candidate can claim these. Let the experience section do the work.
The skills section is most valuable as a supplementary keyword catch for skills that genuinely don't fit naturally into experience descriptions — certifications, languages, tools used peripherally, professional memberships. Keep it factual, specific, and honest about proficiency level where relevant.
Mistake 11 — Bullet points without quantified achievements
"Responsible for managing the social media accounts." "Helped with client communications." "Assisted in project delivery." These phrases describe job duties, not achievements. Hiring managers know that you did the things in your job description — that's why you were hired. What they want to know is: did you do them well, and what did doing them well actually produce?
Quantification turns responsibilities into evidence. "Grew Instagram from 4,200 to 31,000 followers over 14 months through consistent content strategy and paid amplification." "Managed 12 enterprise client accounts with an average NPS of 67 and 94% annual retention rate." "Delivered a 6-month ERP migration project on budget and 3 weeks ahead of schedule, covering 4 entities across 3 countries." These bullets give a hiring manager numbers to anchor on — and numbers are memorable in ways that descriptions are not.
The objection most candidates raise is "my work doesn't lend itself to quantification." This is almost never true. Think about: team sizes managed, budget sizes, revenue influenced, time periods covered, client numbers, process improvements measured in hours saved or error rate reduction, geographic scope, project scale. Even roles that feel purely qualitative (communications, policy, research) have measurable outputs: publications produced, events coordinated, policies implemented, time-to-approval metrics. If you genuinely cannot think of a number, think about scope and scale: "Sole communications officer for a 3,000-person charity serving 14 EU countries" is more informative than "Communications Officer."
Mistake 12 — Including irrelevant or very old experience
A CV is not a legal record of your entire employment history. It is a curated argument for why you are a strong candidate for a specific role. Experience that doesn't support that argument is taking up space that better experience could occupy — and beyond a certain age, experience that happened long ago signals that you may be relying on accomplishments you haven't replicated recently.
The practical guidance: for candidates with more than 10 years of experience, only include the most recent 10–15 years in detail. Earlier roles can be summarised in a single line ("Earlier roles in [sector], available on request") or omitted. For specific roles, think critically about what experience from your history is relevant: a senior software engineer applying for a VP Engineering role doesn't need to list their summer job from university; a career changer from academia to industry doesn't need to list teaching assistant positions from 15 years ago.
Part-time roles, informal work, and very brief stints (under 3 months) should be included only if they add something genuinely relevant — a specific skill, a notable company name, a credential-building experience. A list of 20 roles spanning 25 years looks like you can't prioritise, and it gives the recruiter too much material to misinterpret. Be ruthless about what earns its place on the page. The question for every line is: does this make me a stronger candidate for this specific role? If the answer is no, remove it.