10 CV Mistakes That Make Recruiters Move On

Most CVs that get skipped aren't bad. They're good documents with one or two small flaws that quietly drain credibility. The frustrating part: the writer usually can't see them, because they've read their own CV forty times.

Here are the ten mistakes recruiters notice first — and the ten-minute fix for each.

1. Duty bullets instead of achievement bullets

"Responsible for social media" describes your job description, not your performance. Recruiter eyes glide over it. Fix: start each bullet with a verb and end with evidence — "Grew LinkedIn following from 2k to 11k in 18 months."

2. A summary that could belong to anyone

"Motivated team player seeking new challenges" fails the paste test — anyone could use it, so it says nothing about you. Fix: three sentences — who you are, what you can prove, where you're headed. Full formula in our summary guide.

3. Broken or confusing dates

Gaps aren't the problem; unexplained confusion is. Overlapping dates, missing months, "2019 – 2020" that could mean two years or two weeks. Fix: use a consistent Month Year format everywhere. If there's a real gap, one honest line ("Parental leave", "Full-time study") neutralises it.

4. The wrong keywords for this job

You wrote a great CV for the job you have, not the one you want. If the ad says "stakeholder management" ten times and your CV says "client liaison", the ATS scores you low before a human ever weighs in. Fix: mirror the ad's vocabulary where it's true. Run the pair through an ATS checker to see the actual gap.

5. Skills lists full of noise

"Microsoft Word. Teamwork. Internet." Every filler skill dilutes the ones that matter. Fix: cap the list at what you'd be happy to be tested on. If a skill wouldn't change a hiring decision, delete it.

6. Contact details that work against you

An unprofessional email from 2009, a missing phone number, a city you left two years ago (recruiters filter by location), a LinkedIn URL that 404s. Fix: plain firstname.lastname email, current city, clickable LinkedIn with a customised URL.

7. Inconsistent formatting

Mixed date formats, bullets that switch between dashes and dots, fonts that change halfway down. Each is trivial; together they signal carelessness in a document whose entire purpose is to show care. Fix: pick one template and stay inside it. (This is the quiet argument for using a builder — ours enforce consistency by design.)

8. Typos in the one place they can't hide

Everyone checks the body; nobody checks the headline. "Manger", "Pubic relations" — the classics are classics because they ship constantly. Fix: read the CV out loud, then have a tool or a friend read it. Fresh eyes catch what familiar ones skip.

9. A file the ATS can't read

Scanned-image PDFs, text baked into graphics, elaborate tables that scramble when parsed. The recruiter never sees your CV at all — the software mangles it first. Fix: real text, standard headings, sane structure. Details in what an ATS actually does.

10. Sending the same document everywhere

This is the meta-mistake underneath most of the others. A generic CV is optimised for no one. Fix: keep a master CV with everything, then tailor a copy per application — fifteen minutes once you have a workflow.

None of these require talent or luck to fix. They require one careful pass. Do that pass before your next application — or let CVMate's checks do it with you — and you're already ahead of most of the pile.