Recruiters are Human and Have Pet Hates. Here are Tips for Avoiding Them

Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers

If your skills are in a field where there is a lot of competition, such as administrative and secretarial work, or if you are looking to progress your secretarial and PA career to executive level in a city like London Job hunting is a tough business.

It is surprising how many fairly obvious blunders people make that get them rejected even before they manage to reach interview stage. It is particularly important for a PA to be able to demonstrate word processing, spelling and grammar skills from the start and that means from the CV submission stage.

Recruiters with a pile of CVs from which to select maybe a half dozen candidates for interview will quickly discard any showing any failings in these areas. They also reject any CVs loaded with the hackneyed phrases that are their pet hates, which include including trustworthy, team player, flexible, good communicator, problem solver and works well under pressure.

Of course you are or do all of those things, but you would be expected to for most jobs and to list them with no supporting examples is asking for your statement to be taken on trust and also making you indistinguishable from the rest of the CV pile. It would be much better to come up with short examples of actual situations that demonstrate all these abilities, each as bullet points in no more than two lines and relevant to the post you're applying for.

Nobody has time to read a CV of more than two pages maximum and probably the decision will have been made well before reaching the supporting evidence of previous jobs and qualifications. Another idea is to list your key objectives for your career at the top below your name and contact details - showing you have done some resarch and have some knowledge of the organisation to which you are applying, and again keeping it short.

Of course, once you have secured the interview, you know you should dress appropriately for business and for the post and your appearance should not be in any way extreme, that you should arrive promptly and should have with you a couple of intelligent questions to ask at the inverview. It is astonishing, however, how many people arrive at an interview ill-prepared and almost sabotaging their chances before they start. These are the top ten disasters that prompted immediate rejection identified in a recent survey of more than 100 employers and recruiters:

1. Poor personal hygiene (68%)
2. Negative body language (64%)
3. Poor speech and grammar (59%)
4. Dress sense (56%)
5. Bad attitude (52%)
6. Excessive body piercing or tattoos (49%)
7. Inappropriate sense of humour (47%)
8. Accent (44%)
9. Unattractive (41%)
10. Poor employment history (38%)

One or two of them are admittedly subjective and perhaps unfair - as in "unattractive" for example - but the majority should be obvious to anyone who is serious about succeeding at interview.

Here are a few more incredible examples just to finish off and they include asking for a light or for permission to smoke (by law smoking is banned in all workplaces), answering a mobile phone or sending a text during the interview, criticizing current or previous employers and providing too much personal information.

While you can't be expected to anticipate an interviewer's personal foibles as in one case we read about where an obviously suitable candidate was rejected for wearing a small brooch in the shape of a turtle which unfortunately was this particular chap's pet hate, there is no excuse for not making every effort to show yourself in the best possible light and with the requirements of a particular type of job firmly in mind


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Avoiding the recruiters' pet CV and interview hates is key to progressing in a career from secretarial and admin to a top level PA in a city like London. Writer Ali Withers gets some tips from RMS Recruitment in London.