Brits have been offered much-needed relief as figures showed wages are outpacing inflation by the biggest margin in two and a half years.
And the regular salary rose 2.1 percent year-on-year in real terms in the three months to February. This is the highest rate since September 2021, reflecting price flexibility.
The bad news? The latest official figures also suggest the labor market is cooling, with unemployment rising to 4.2% and vacancies falling.
Following news of the UK’s rising unemployment rate, education and careers expert Robbie Bryant, from Open Study College, shared five things job seekers could be doing wrong when submitting a CV.
Keep reading below for his top tips to ensure you don’t miss out on your dream job:
Following news of the UK’s rising unemployment rate, education and careers expert Robbie Bryant, from Open Study College, reveals five things you’re doing wrong with your CV
Share a photo
Giving his first piece of advice, careers expert Robbie says it’s key to avoid sharing an image with a CV.
It warns that unless personally requested by the employer, it is not recommended and should therefore be avoided as standard practice.
Explaining why this is the case, Robbie said: ‘The candidate should only focus on presenting their skills, work experience and relevance to the role.
“The employer does not hire the candidate based on their appearance, so sharing an image will not add any real value to the CV.”
Too many grades
Robbie’s next tip is about how to display qualifications on your CV, meaning this tip is a little more nuanced and depends on the age of the job seeker.
If you’re applying for a job and don’t have qualifications from all levels of education, then he says it’s beneficial to include them.
He stated: ‘If candidates have completed higher education, then the most recent qualifications will be sufficient for the employer.
“Unless the candidate has acquired additional qualifications that are relevant to the job, the employer only needs to know the candidate’s highest qualification.”
Unprofessional email
The CV guru stated that it is essential that candidates include an email so that the employer can contact them.
However, including an email address created a long time ago, with a descriptive name, could give the wrong impression to the employer as it lacks professionalism.
Instead, he said you should create a new email address, since doing so takes less than five minutes.
In the early stages of the application, the expert says a professional-looking email address could make the difference between moving on to the next stage or not.
Too many irrelevant skills
While Robbie admits that there are no universal approaches to how to correctly formulate a CV, it should be used as a working document and tailored to the job you are applying for.
With this in mind, the expert says that it is of course important to include skills on a CV, but that some candidates will often include skills that are irrelevant to the job role.
Instead, he says, candidates should list four or five key skills that reflect the skills the recruiter is looking for, something that will help them establish important instances of relevant experience.
Meaningless personal details
Sharing his latest advice, Robbie said that the job seeker should avoid including unnecessary personal details that do not relate to the job itself.
While he encouraged people to share the best version of themselves, he cautioned that the interviewer does not need to know your exact address or date of birth.
He noted that while hobbies help show an interest outside of work, they won’t help you stand out against a competitor’s skills or qualifications.
Robbie finished by warning that, since a CV is a small document, every point included in it must be relevant to the position you have applied for in the first place.