10 CV mistakes that cost you interviews.And the exact fixes recruiters look for.

Recruiters skim for outcomes. Replace 'responsible for managing team' with 'Led 12-person team; reduced churn 18% in 9 months.' Every bullet should carry a verb, a number and a business result.

'Motivated professional with strong communication skills' is filler. Write a 3-line positioning statement: what you do, for whom, with what measurable edge. Rewrite it for every role.

That is how long a recruiter spends on the first scan. Your name, current title, target role and top three achievements must be visible above the fold — before any scrolling.

Multi-column layouts, text inside images and exotic fonts break parsing. Use a single-column base, standard section names (Experience, Education, Skills) and export as text-selectable PDF.

Cap experience at 10–15 years of relevant history. Group older roles under 'Earlier career' with one line each. Recency and relevance beat completeness.

'Leadership, Communication, Excel, Teamwork' tells no one anything. Split hard skills (tools, languages, certifications) from a short list of leadership capabilities backed by a bullet in your Experience section.

Mirror the exact phrasing of 5–7 keywords from the posting. Not keyword-stuffing — deliberate alignment so both the ATS and the hiring manager immediately see the fit.

Current role in present tense, everything else in past. Dates in one format (MMM YYYY). Read the file backwards once — you will catch what you missed reading forwards.

A one-paragraph letter that restates the CV is worse than none. Open with why this company, close with what you would do in the first 90 days. Three short paragraphs, signed.

Name it 'Firstname-Lastname-Role.pdf'. It is the first impression before anyone opens the file — and it makes you findable in a recruiter's inbox six weeks later.