10 CV Mistakes That Get You Rejected Before a Human Reads It

Why small mistakes cost you the interview

Most rejections don't happen because a candidate lacks the right experience — they happen because the CV made that experience hard to find, hard to trust, or hard to read quickly. Recruiters and hiring managers often spend well under a minute on a first pass, so a CV has to work fast. The mistakes below aren't matters of taste; each one directly gets in the way of that fast first read.

The 10 mistakes

• Burying the relevant experience on page two, after outdated or irrelevant jobs.
• Writing duty lists ("Responsible for...") instead of outcomes ("Reduced X by Y").
• Using a template with columns or graphics that many applicant tracking systems can't parse correctly, silently scrambling your text.
• Inconsistent dates and formatting — one job says "Jan 2021," the next says "01/2021."
• A photo, personal details, or design choices that distract from the actual content (a photo is optional and, for some employers, best left out entirely).
• No numbers anywhere — team size, budget, percentage improvement, timeline.
• A generic, one-size-fits-all CV sent to every job, with no adjustment for the specific posting.
• Spelling and grammar mistakes that suggest carelessness.
• An email address or contact detail that's outdated, unprofessional, or simply wrong.
• A CV that's either too thin to show real substance or padded with filler to look longer.

How to check your own CV before sending it

Read it as if you were the recruiter, with 30 seconds and no context. Can you tell, at a glance, what job you're applying for and why you're a fit? If you have to explain something out loud for it to make sense, rewrite that part until the page carries the meaning on its own.