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. 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.

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, it is not working for you.

Mistake two: no clear structure. If your name, experience, and skills are not obvious in the first few seconds, you have already lost. Tiny fonts, cluttered layouts, and inconsistent formatting all get you rejected on sight.

Mistake three: sending the same CV everywhere. A generic CV signals a generic candidate. When your CV mirrors the exact job description, it reads like you actually want that job. When it does not, it reads like spam.

Mistake four: small careless errors. A typo. An old phone number. A broken portfolio link. These look tiny to you. To a recruiter choosing between forty CVs, they read as a preview of how careless you will be with real client work.

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.

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.

Your next step: pull up your CV right now and check it against these five mistakes, one by one. Then refer 10 friends to our free training and get a real CV Review as part of it, one of the fastest, highest-value fixes in your entire job search.