Member Article

What not to write...

There are certain things that should be taken for granted when writing a CV – career history, educational record, a concise personal description, and so on. But even this seems too much for some people. In April job hunting website CareerBuilder.com released a list of the top 12 most unusual pieces of information received by their recruitment managers. The list included a candidate who enclosed a picture of herself in swimwear, one who detailed holiday plans for the next three years and made it clear she would not be changing them, and another who explained that she was ‘financially incompetent’.

The above examples all came from UK applicants. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the US CareerBuilder survey found some more unusual ones. These include the candidate who attached a letter from her mother, the candidate who specified that his availability was limited because Friday, Saturday and Sunday was “drinking time”, and the strange person who felt it necessary to point out the fact that her sister once won a strawberry eating contest. Our personal favourite, however, is the applicant who explained an arrest by stating: “We stole a pig, but it was a really small pig.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .