Almost nine in 10 (88%) of recruiters see mistakes on IT jobseekers’ CVs, according to research from IT recruitment website CWJobs.co.uk.

The research shows 74% of IT jobseekers are confident they represent themselves better in person than on paper, while 23% of IT jobseekers admit to getting someone else to write their CV for them.

Rob Grimsey, director of global professional recruitment and IT outsourcing groupHarvey Nash, says: “Selling skills on paper doesn’t necessarily come naturally to IT jobseekers. We often come across CVs where people haven’t explained the full extent of their achievements, preferring instead to just list skills.

“In addition to spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, it is also quite common for jobseekers to get the syntax of how they name technologies and products wrong. The good news is that many of these mistakes are resolvable, simply by getting others to review the CV. After all it’s one of the most important two-page documents of an IT professional’s life.“

Dawn Campion, managing director of IT recruiter Ellen Webb, adds: “IT jobseekers must appreciate that they aren’t necessarily going to be interviewed by people who fully understand both technology and the technical language they use. IT roles are increasingly client facing now and if IT professionals want to represent themselves well in a job interview situation, they must be able to show that they are able to communicate with non-technical as well as technical people competently.”