A recruiter looks at your CV for about six seconds before deciding what pile it goes in. Six seconds. Not six minutes. Six seconds.
That is the brutal reality of job hunting today, whether you're applying to a bank in Lagos, a startup in Nairobi, or a multinational's graduate programme. Your CV is not being read. It is being scanned. And in most cases, one small mistake is enough to get you rejected before anyone even considers your actual experience.
Here are the five mistakes doing the most damage right now, and exactly how to fix each one in one sitting.
Mistake one: listing duties instead of results. "Responsible for handling customer enquiries" tells a recruiter nothing. "Resolved 40 customer enquiries a day with a 95% satisfaction score" tells them everything. If any line on your CV could apply to literally anyone who ever held that job title, it is not working for you. Go through every bullet point and ask: what changed because I was there?
Mistake two: no clear structure. If your name, most recent role, and key skills are not obvious in the first few seconds, you have already lost. Tiny fonts, cluttered layouts, decorative columns, and inconsistent formatting all get you rejected on sight, and they also confuse the software many employers now use to scan CVs before a human sees them. A clean, single-column layout beats a "designed" CV almost every time outside creative fields.
This isn't just about looking clean to a human. Applicant tracking software often struggles to correctly read text placed in tables, headers, footers, or multiple columns, so even a beautifully designed CV can arrive on a recruiter's screen as scrambled, out-of-order text. If you're not sure how your CV would look after being parsed by software, save it as a plain, simple layout first, then make it visually appealing second.
Mistake three: sending the same CV everywhere. A generic CV signals a generic candidate. When your CV mirrors the exact language of the job description, it reads like you actually want that specific job. When it does not, it reads like spam, and recruiters who post a role in Lagos or Accra and receive five hundred identical CVs learn to spot the copy-paste ones instantly.
Mistake four: small careless errors. A typo. An old phone number. A broken portfolio or LinkedIn link. A leftover "[Company Name]" you forgot to replace. These look tiny to you. To a recruiter choosing between forty CVs for one role, they read as a preview of how careless you will be with real client work or real company money.
Mistake five, and the one nobody talks about: you have probably never had your CV reviewed by someone who actually hires people. Friends are kind. Kindness does not get you past a recruiter. A parent or classmate telling you it "looks good" is not the same feedback as someone who screens fifty CVs a week telling you what actually gets rejected.
One more thing specific to CVs in Nigeria: including your age, marital status, religion, state of origin, or a passport photo was common advice years ago, but most modern recruiters, including at Nigerian banks and FMCGs, no longer expect or want this. It takes up space that could hold another achievement, and for some multinational employers it can actually look outdated. Unless a job advert specifically asks for it, leave it out.
Here is the good news. Unlike interview skills, a CV can be fixed in one sitting. You do not need months. You need honesty and a willingness to rewrite what is not working.
Run this 60-second audit on your CV right now:
☐ Does every bullet point include a number or a measurable result?
☐ Can you find your name, most recent role, and top skills within three seconds of looking at it?
☐ Does this exact CV match the language of the job you're applying to today, not a generic version?
☐ Have you read every line out loud, slowly, in the last month?
☐ Has anyone who actually hires people reviewed this CV, not just a friend or family member?
Should my CV be one page? Not as a hard rule. What matters is that every line earns its place. A tight one-page CV beats a padded one, and a focused two-page CV beats a one-page CV missing real achievements just to fit the limit.
Do I need a photo on my CV? For most professional roles in Nigeria and across Africa, a photo is optional and rarely changes a hiring decision either way. If you include one, keep it a simple, professional headshot, not a casual or edited photo, and never let it distract from your actual content.
What should I put instead of an objective statement? Replace it with a two-line summary naming your area and your strongest proof point, for example: "Recent Economics graduate with hands-on experience analysing sales data for a 3-branch retail business during NYSC, now looking to move into a full-time data or business analyst role." That single swap alone fixes the first thing a recruiter sees.
Your next step: pull up your CV right now and check it against the five mistakes above. If you want a second pair of eyes, the TAS Employability Assessment includes a full CV and profile review as part of your results, so you're not guessing which of these five is actually holding you back.
