LONDON, 31 October 2013 – CV expectations may vary from country to country, but there are some things hiring managers everywhere agree on: a bad resume is not going to get you the job. In a recent survey of more than 5,000 hiring managers and human resource professionals in countries with the largest gross domestic product, conducted online between May 9 and June 5, 2013 by Harris Interactive©, CareerBuilder asked employer what would cause them to immediately dismiss a CV from contention.
Job seekers around the globe need to pay particularly close attention to the following six concerns of employers, when they are submitting a CV for employment:
Spell-Check - submitting a CV with a typo is the biggest annoyance to hiring managers in France, with 68 percent of them saying they’d immediately dismiss a CV with typos, more than any other country. Brazil was second, with 67 percent saying they’d automatically pass on a CV with typos, followed by
- Italy (65 percent)
- US (58 percent)
- China (56 percent)
- Germany (52 percent)
- Russia (49 percent)
- UK (47 percent)
- Japan (34 percent)
- India (28 percent)
Don’t Mass-Produce - personalizing your CV to the position you’re applying to is especially important in China, where 71 percent of hiring managers stated that they would ignore CVs that seemed generic. Forty-five percent of employers in India said the same, along with:
- UK (42 percent)
- Italy (39 percent)
- France (39 percent)
- Germany (39 percent)
- Brazil (38 percent)
- US (37 percent)
- Russia (35 percent)
- Japan (31 percent)
Use Your Own Words — employers in China are the most annoyed by CVs that copy a large amount of wording from the job posting, with 65 percent of Chinese employers automatically dismissing such CVs. China is followed by
- Brazil (54 percent)
- Russia (48 percent)
- India (42 percent)
- Italy (41 percent)
- Japan (41 percent)
- UK (40 percent)
- US (32 percent)
- Germany (24 percent)
- France (23 percent)
Highlight Your Skills – including a list of skills in a CV is most important when applying to positions in India, where 56 percent of employers would immediately dismiss CVs lacking a list of skills. Similarly, 55 percent of employers in Russia say they would reject CVs without a list of skills, followed by
- Germany (44 percent)
- UK (40 percent)
- Italy (37 percent)
- China (36 percent)
- US (35 percent)
- Brazil (32 percent)
- France (29 percent)
- Japan (7 percent)
Keep it Professional– inappropriate email addresses are grounds for immediately rejecting a CV according to 38 percent of employers in Brazil and 36 percent of employers in China. India is third with 33 percent of hiring managers dismissing resumes with inappropriate email addresses, followed by
- US (31 percent)
- UK (24 percent)
- France (24 percent)
- Germany (22 percent)
- Russia (20 percent)
- Japan (16 percent)
- Italy (14 percent)
Don’t Forget the Cover letter — employers, particularly in Germany, where 39 percent of hiring managers won’t consider an application that doesn’t include a cover letter, often dismiss CVs that are submitted without cover letters.
- France (30 percent)
- UK (24 percent)
- India (20 percent)
- US (13 percent)
- Brazil (9 percent)
- China (9 percent)
- Italy (8 percent)
- Japan (6 percent)
- Russia (3 percent)
Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online within the U.S., Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia and the U.K. by Harris Interactive© on behalf of CareerBuilder among 400 to 2,279 hiring managers and human resource professionals (employed full-time, not self-employed, government and non-government) in each country between May 9 and June 5, 2013 (percentages for some questions are based on a subset, based on their responses to certain questions). With pure probability samples ranging from 400 to 2,279, one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error between +/- 4.9 and +/-2.05 percentage points. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.
About CareerBuilder®
CareerBuilder is the global leader in human capital solutions, helping companies target and attract their most important asset – their people. Its online career site, CareerBuilder.com®, is the largest in the United States with more than 24 million unique visitors, 1 million jobs and 50 million resumes. CareerBuilder works with the world’s top employers, providing resources for everything from talent and compensation intelligence to employment branding and recruitment support. More than 10,000 websites, including 140 newspapers and broadband portals such as MSN and AOL, feature CareerBuilder’s proprietary job search technology on their career sites. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Tribune Company and The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI), CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the United States, Europe, South America, Canada and Asia. For more information, visitwww.careerbuilder.com
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