23 Things Not To Put On Your Cv

Having recruited to a number of different professions, I can say with absolute confidence that medical CVs are among the very worst I have ever seen. Somehow, amazingly, many doctor’s CVs seem to really hit every mark of ‘what not to do’. Rest assured, though, that it is certainly a problem you can fix.

Why is it so? The short answer is ‘market forces’. Did they need to supply a CV to get an intern job? No.

Then, when doctors apply for their first jobs after internship (RMO/HMO), it doesn't really matter what their CV looks like - there were plenty of doctors jobs.

There is a huge surplus of medical jobs in Australia, so by necessity, doctors haven’t had to learn the skill of writing a CV. Just a few years ago, you could most likely get a locum job with half a CV written on the back of a banana leaf.

What has changed?(

Slowly, the medical employment market is becoming more competitive, and regulated. Many colleges are not increasing the amount of training places available and most employers are heavily formalising selection and employment of locums, even for short term jobs.

There is now a need to really master the skill of getting your CV right.

First, forget everything you learnt at school about writing CVs. It was a waste of time.

Second, never include any of these items in your CV. You may laugh at some of these, but most of them we see every single day on resumes, some are rarer - but are real examples of what I have personally seen.

1. Photograph
2. Marital status
3. Health status
4. Hobbies or interests
5. Details of children
6. Any paragraph longer than 40 words
7. Sporting achievements
8. Anything negative
9. Anything untrue
10. Your race or colour
11. Date of birth
12. Referees names and contact details (Why? Because you want to control access to your referees)
13. Religion
14. Political affiliations
15. Height or weight
16. Weird or offensive email addresses (such as hotpants69@sexylady.com)
17. Irrelevant jobs
18. Irrelevant education
19. Salary/income expectations
20. Anything spelt incorrectly
21. Irrelevant rants about your life, travel, desires, etc
22. Lists of every single procedure you have ever done, or considered doing in your life
23. Detailed background of your Medicare fraud activities

There are some exceptions to these rules - for example, when an employer or college specifically asks for certain information to be included.

Open up your CV right now, identify anything that should not be in there, and delete it. For some of you, you may have only a blank page left! You now have an excellent starting point to a killer CV.

By: Shaun Hughston

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This article was written by Shaun Hughston for medical recruitment agency, Beat Medical. Beat Medical helps doctors find locum doctor jobs or permanent positions across Australia. From specialist to General Practitioner jobs.