4 Sections You Should Remove From Your CV To Start Getting Interviews

By Lilian Wamaitha

An employer has only 20 seconds to go through your CV  so you need to convince them within that time frame that you are the right candidate. This therefore means only one thing.

If your CV doesn’t meet their standards, it’s just going to be thrown out. This translates to a lot of unnecessary sections that people often include when writing a CV.

Here are 4 sections that you need to remove from your CV if you are to get any interviews.

Sections You Need To Get Rid Of In A CV

1. Photos

Unless you are applying for a job that requires you to showcase your attractiveness, photos are not necessary in a CV.

They are not going to make you earn that job more than that candidate who doesn’t have a photo.

And again, people are different and you never know – someone might just use your looks as a way to discriminate you.

And again, the employer is only interested in your achievements and experience and not how you look.

2. Unnecessary personal information

You would be surprised how much unnecessary information people put on their CVs. Information about your religious affiliation can serve as grounds to discriminate you, same as tribe and marital status.

You also don’t also have to include unnecessary hobbies that are in no way related to the job you are applying for, like watching movies or dancing.

The secret to writing a great CV that gets you interviews is to really think about every detail you want to add. Is adding that you were a bell ringer back in primary school going to help you case? Are you going to be given the job based on some mere achievement more than a decade ago?

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3. Reasons for leaving your former job

If you are not a recent graduate there are high chances that you have held one or more jobs before. The job you are applying for is not therefore your first.

There is no law that says that you are required to reveal your reasons for leaving your previous jobs to your potential employer. That is not necessary in the application stage. If the employer is interested in such information it will come up in the interview stage.

4. Irrelevant Work Experience

So many CVs I have come across have a lot of unnecessary work history. You will not impress the recruiter by including every job position you have ever held on your CV. For some especially fresh graduates, they do it to make their CV appear longer since they do have much in terms of work experience.

HR advices that you should only include jobs that are related to the position you are applying for. For fresh graduates, include those internships and volunteer positions you have held. Remove unnecessary work experience, like “Working as an IEBC Polling Clerk.”

When it comes to writing a compelling CV, you have to be very careful about the kind of information you put in.

Remember, the recruiter has thousands of CVs to go through and if they don’t find what they are looking for in the first few seconds, chances are that you won’t be getting an interview call.