CVs DO Still Have a Place in Recruitment, Say Recruiters

Despite an increasing amount of job hunters creating quirky CVs and reaching out to employers with attention-grabbing antics, new research reveals that 98.5% of recruiters believe that traditional CVs still hold an important place in today’s recruitment process, with a further 75.5% stating that they do not believe that quirky CVs will become common practice in the UK.

The research, which was conducted amongst over 900 recruitment professionals by the UK’s leading independent job site, CV-Library, revealed that despite a staggering 84.2% of recruiters believing that CVs will still be relevant in ten years’ time, almost two thirds (61.9%) believe that professional networking sites will be more important than the traditional CV in the future.

Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library comments on the findings, “The recruitment industry is constantly evolving, with increasing numbers of job hunters pulling out all the stops to attract attention from recruiters and employers. Over the past year we have seen some of the quirkier stunts hit the headlines, such as the candidate who put their CV on a chocolate bar, and job hunter who rapped their CV to prospective employers. But while these are memorable, they’re not always entirely practical and it’s important that we continue to promote the value of the traditional CV to UK workers.”

Interestingly, the research also found that almost three quarters (73.9%) of recruiters believe that candidates should still list basic skills, such as Microsoft Office, on their CV. Despite this, a further 74.9% believe that employers are becoming more interested in broader experience and niche qualifications, than basic business skills. The research did highlight the importance of soft skills, and many offered their advice on the best and worst skills that candidates should include on a CV:

Biggins continues: “Our research shows that businesses find the traditional approach to be most important, and this is not entirely unsurprising. While some employers now place more importance on broader experience and niche skills, it’s important that job hunters are reminded that they should shout about their soft skills, and highlight transferable qualities that they can apply to the role in question. It’s widely-acknowledged that only the best CVs make the cut, so it’s important that they contain only the most relevant, enticing information for employers.”

In addition to sharing the most and least important soft skills that should be included, recruiters also shared the areas that they find to be the most irrelevant on a CV, which included:

1. Photos – 25.8%
2. Jargon – 18.6%
3. Hobbies – 10.8%
4. Outdated employment history – 9.9%
5. Unnecessarily big words – 7%

Others included school grades (5.3%), personal interests (4.3%), acronyms (3.1%), objectives and aims (2.7%) and social media links (2.5%).

This latest news comes just weeks after CV-Library revealed that nearly half of UK workers (48.1%) don’t know how to write a standout CV, which could help them to secure a job interview.

Learn more about CV-Library at: www.cv-library.co.uk