'I was a recruiter and CV mistake made me reject people in seconds'

'I was a recruiter and CV mistake made me reject people in seconds' Amelia Brooke is now a career coach and has explained what made her bin CVs straight away A former recruiter has revealed the CV mistakes that made her reject candidates in seconds. Career coach Amelia Brooke of Amelia Brooke Career Vision said she threw CVs straight in the bin, or at least the digital equivalent: the reject folder, if it failed to make clear why they were suitable for the vacancy. Some applicants had degrees, master’s qualifications, PhDs and years of valuable experience – but that was not enough if their relevance was buried beneath pages of unfocused information. Amelia said: “When I worked in recruitment, I received CVs from highly qualified people around the world and sometimes made a decision within seconds. It sounds brutal, but recruiters dealing with large numbers of applications do not have time to investigate every candidate’s full history or piece together why someone might be suitable. “The biggest mistake was making me search for their relevance. If I could not quickly understand what they bring to the table and why it mattered for the role, I moved on. “That did not necessarily mean they were incapable of doing the job. Their CV had simply failed to communicate it.” Common CV problems explained by former recruiter Amelia said common problems included lengthy documents, dense blocks of text, irrelevant career histories and lists of responsibilities that failed to demonstrate what the applicant can do and wants to do next. She once encountered an engineering CV so long that she folded and taped its pages together before taking it to a school careers event. Amelia stood on a table and released the document, allowing it to cascade towards the floor, before contrasting it with a single sheet of paper. She said: “The students understood the point immediately: nobody wants to search through page after page to discover why they should interview someone. That doesn’t mean every CV must be one page. A graduate may need only one, while an experienced professional usually justifies two. The true test is whether every single section helps make the case for the role you want next.” Set a specific goal She advised job seekers to set a specific goal before rewriting their CV, selecting only the experience, skills and achievements that support it. “Goals give your personal brand and job search direction,” Amelia explained. “Ask yourself three questions: Who do I want to be? What do I want to do? What do I want from this career move? If you can’t answer those, adding more words won't help; instead, you risk creating an unfocused master CV, producing conflicting versions of yourself, and constantly shape-shifting to mirror every job advert.” Challenge the 'norm' Amelia challenged standard industry advice: “Generic tips will tell you to list your skills, incorporate keywords and use clean headings, but strategy demands far more.” She added: “When you’re competing for senior leadership, the hiring team isn’t interested in your past list of duties; they are looking for proof that you can build, scale, or transform their organisation. Never assume decision-makers will join the dots between what you’ve done and what you can do next. Your value needs to be relevant, authentically yours and immediately visible.”