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The research, which was conducted amongst over 900 hiring professionals by the UK’s leading independent job site, CV-Library, revealed that despite a staggering 84.2% of employers 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 employers and business owners. 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 employers believe that candidates should still list basic skills, such as Microsoft Office, on their CV. Despite this, a further 74.9% believe that hiring managers 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, its 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. Its widely-acknowledged that only the best CVs make the cut, so its 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, employers 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 Outdated employment history  9.9%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%).


Picture of CV on clipboard: Bigstock