Why are so many contractor CVs still so badly written?

[edison]

Given all the sensible advice available on forums such as this, I was staggered at how bad many contractor CVs were that I reviewed whilst trying to recruit PMs. For example:

CVs up to 10 pages long - who is going to read all that waffle?
CVs that list dozens of bland sounding responsibilities but hardly anything about tangible achievements or little in the way of context e.g. project size.

Most frustratingly of all is being sent these types of CVs in the first place by agents. It's almost as if they matched on a single keyword search and then just forwarded the CV verbatim. Surely they must know these CVs look terrible (even if the candidate might actually be fairly good?)

I was so desperate for one particular role that I actually did end up reading some of these lengthy CVs but it was painful!

This happened with multiple agencies and roles. My only thought was that as the roles were in quite specialist/in demand business areas, the candidates and agencies can get away with it because subconsciously they know they are in demand so don't have to try too hard.

[northernladuk]

We've had CV discussions plenty of times and one of the 6-10 pages crowd pops on and defends it to the hilt and won't be told otherwise. Does surprise me how blinkered some people are around this.

[edison]

We've had CV discussions plenty of times and one of the 6-10 pages crowd pops on and defends it to the hilt and won't be told otherwise. Does surprise me how blinkered some people are around this.

I agree but it also makes it very time consuming to follow the best practice and tailor a CV for each role if it's so long. I can only assume those people send out the same crap CV for nearly all applications?

[northernladuk]

I agree but it also makes it very time consuming to follow the best practice and tailor a CV for each role if it's so long. I can only assume those people send out the same crap CV for nearly all applications?

Who knows? Just leave them to it. You can't argue with stupid.

[uk contractor]

OP you give agencies far too much credit most are now staffed with very cheap to hire inexperienced sales & performance based workers with minimal if any IT experience.

[Hobosapien]

Many agencies are nothing more than CV harvesters, as far as quality checking prospective applicants goes.

Maybe clients should review their preferred supplier lists and try other agencies if the one(s) being used are coming up short on expected quality of service. That way the truly crap ones get frozen out.

With the in progress shake up of private sector contracting re IR35 maybe clients will realise they can do it all themselves if the only real difference currently is the agency puts out the ads and forwards the CVs. Clients still do all the main vetting and interviewing so cut out the middle-man parasite and recruit direct. Makes sense when agency offers no real value and if contract is deemed inside IR35 by client anyway then the traditional buffer between client and contractor for 'not appearing to be an employee' is mute.

On a separate note, I am going to do absolutely nothing to encourage contractors to improve their CVs in the first place. Less competition that way.

[PerfectStorm]

6 pages on mine and it gets me work, so...

The sections, lists of clients etc are very clearly laid out so the reader can stop and read any section of interest.

It's better than being told that I haven't got experience in something or other because it's not explicitly spelled out.

[northernladuk]

6 pages on mine and it gets me work, so...

The sections, lists of clients etc are very clearly laid out so the reader can stop and read any section of interest.

It's better than being told that I haven't got experience in something or other because it's not explicitly spelled out.

See what I mean.....

[m0n1k3r]

Given all the sensible advice available on forums such as this, I was staggered at how bad many contractor CVs were that I reviewed whilst trying to recruit PMs. For example:

[...]
CVs that list dozens of bland sounding responsibilities but hardly anything about tangible achievements or little in the way of context e.g. project size.

The worst kind is those that under each "job" (as they call it) just provide a long bullet point list of tasks - "did this", "did that", "managed this", "managed that" - and have essentially the same list repeated over and over under each heading. They are unfortunately also one of the most common ones. I suspect the idea is to give as many hits as possible on keyword searches.

Having written that, my own CV is 11 pages long and only list parts of my career. I used to maintain a full CV that listed everything, to copy and shorten down for each opportunity, bit it got to more than 20 pages and it was simply too much work so I stopped.

[northernladuk]

The worst kind is those that under each "job" (as they call it) just provide a long bullet point list of tasks - "did this", "did that", "managed this", "managed that" - and have essentially the same list repeated over and over under each heading. They are unfortunately also one of the most common ones. I suspect the idea is to give as many hits as possible on keyword searches.

Having written that, my own CV is 11 pages long and only list parts of my career. I used to maintain a full CV that listed everything, to copy and shorten down for each opportunity, bit it got to more than 20 pages and it was simply too much work so I stopped.

and again....