Nine CV mistakes Nigerian recruiters reject instantly

Recruiters are not reading your CV first. They are scanning it — for a job title, a company, a number and a reason to keep going. Six to ten seconds is the usual first pass. These are the things that stop it.

The nine

1. 1A wall of duties. “Responsible for managing the front desk” says what you were assigned. “Handled 60+ walk-in enquiries a day and cut average wait time from 12 to 5 minutes” says what happened. Results beat responsibilities every time.
2. 2No numbers anywhere. Not every job can be measured in Naira, but almost all can be measured in volume, speed, accuracy or size of team. If a page of your CV has no digit on it, it is too vague.
3. 3One CV for every job. Recruiters can tell within two lines that the CV was written for something else. Keep a master CV, then cut and re-order it for each advert.
4. 4A contact line that fails. A typo in the phone number, an email like `sexy_girl_2004@`, no city. This is the most common reason a shortlisted candidate is never reached.
5. 5The company's name spelled wrong. Copy it from the advert. It reads as carelessness, and carelessness is fatal in a job where accuracy matters.
6. 6Unexplained gaps. A gap is not disqualifying; an unexplained one is. One line fixes it: “Family responsibilities, 2024”, “Completed MSc, 2023”, “Freelance design, 2024–2025”.
7. 7Clutter around identity. Photo, date of birth, marital status, religion, state of origin. If the employer's own form asks, answer there. On the CV it takes space and invites bias.
8. 8Typos and mixed tenses. “Manage”, “managed” and “managing” in the same job history. Read it aloud once, then read it backwards — you catch more that way.
9. 9Four pages for three years of work. Length is not seriousness. One page under eight years, two after that, and nothing from secondary school unless it is your highest qualification.

The three that end it fastest

If you only fix three, fix the numbers, the contact line and the length. Those are the ones a recruiter discovers in the first pass, and each one alone can be enough to move your file to the no pile.

Fix them in one sitting

1. 1Print the advert and underline every requirement.
2. 2Reorder your bullets so the most relevant one is first in each job.
3. 3Add one number to every bullet that could possibly have one.
4. 4Cut the oldest job that no longer helps.
5. 5Read the whole thing out loud, then send it to one honest friend.

The before and after

The difference between a duty and an achievement is usually one number and one verb. These are real shapes of bullets Nigerian recruiters see, and the version that gets read twice.

None of those needed a promotion or a bigger job. They needed the person to write down what actually changed because they were there.

How to catch the typos

1. 1Read it aloud. Your mouth trips over the sentence your eye skipped.
2. 2Read it backwards, from the last line to the first. You stop predicting and start seeing.
3. 3Change the font and size, then read again. Your brain stops auto-correcting.
4. 4Check the names: the company, the role, your referees, your own phone number.
5. 5Send it to one person who will tell you the truth, and give them a deadline of an hour so they actually read it.