Finding a job requires more than just gathering titles, listing previous positions, and detailing duties performed. The curriculum vitae is, in many cases, the first point of contact with a company and should allow the person reviewing it to quickly understand what a person can do, their experience, and what they can bring to the role. However, when preparing this document, it is common to resort to formulas that seem appropriate because they are repeated in thousands of applications. The issue is that when all applicants use similar expressions, it becomes harder to differentiate their profiles. The key is to replace generic statements with verifiable information that reflects abilities, responsibilities, and results. This is one of the warnings raised by Elena Lucas, a career counselor and social media content disseminator, in a video where she identifies three expressions that, in her opinion, can make a curriculum lose interest during a first review. The three phrases that can weaken a curriculum. 1. «Proactive individual with a desire to learn». It is one of the most common formulas in professional profiles, but its repetition makes it stand out little. Elena Lucas puts it this way: «Everyone puts it and it really doesn’t say anything.» The challenge isn’t that the initiative or willingness to learn are irrelevant qualities, but that a generic statement doesn’t prove the candidate has them. It is more effective to describe a specific situation where they took the initiative, learned a tool, or solved a problem. For example, instead of just listing those qualities, a person can explain that they proposed an improvement in a procedure, organized a task to reduce errors, or learned a program that facilitated the team’s work.
Finding a job requires more than just gathering titles, listing previous positions, and detailing duties performed. The curriculum vitae is, in many cases, the first point of contact with a company and should allow the person reviewing it to quickly understand what a person can do, their experience, and what they can bring to the role. However, when preparing this document, it is common to resort to formulas that seem appropriate because they are repeated in thousands of applications. The issue is that when all applicants use similar expressions, it becomes harder to differentiate their profiles. The key is to replace generic statements with verifiable information that reflects abilities, responsibilities, and results. This is one of the warnings raised by Elena Lucas, a career counselor and social media content disseminator, in a video where she identifies three expressions that, in her opinion, can make a curriculum lose interest during a first review. The three phrases that can weaken a curriculum. 1. «Proactive individual with a desire to learn». It is one of the most common formulas in professional profiles, but its repetition makes it stand out little. Elena Lucas puts it this way: «Everyone puts it and it really doesn’t say anything.» The challenge isn’t that the initiative or willingness to learn are irrelevant qualities, but that a generic statement doesn’t prove the candidate has them. It is more effective to describe a specific situation where they took the initiative, learned a tool, or solved a problem. For example, instead of just listing those qualities, a person can explain that they proposed an improvement in a procedure, organized a task to reduce errors, or learned a program that facilitated the team’s work.
