4 Things I Wish
I Knew Before My
100th Job Rejection

Employers and recruiters skim — they don't read. If your CV isn't scannable in 6 seconds, it gets put down, not read carefully.

• Put your availability in the top 2 lines — not buried at the bottom. Employers filter for this first.
• Use one column, standard headings ("Experience," "Education," "Skills") — no creative renaming, no graphics or text boxes.
• One page. Always, for part-time and entry-level roles.

This is the single highest-leverage 2-minute fix most students skip. Applicant Tracking Systems (used by many employers and agencies) score your CV on exact keyword overlap with the job ad — not on synonyms. If the ad says "customer service" and your CV says "client-facing," that's a mismatch the system may not credit.

Online applications go into a queue with hundreds of others. A walk-in, a phone call, or a direct email skips that queue entirely. For hospitality and retail especially: go in person during a quiet period (not peak hours), ask for the manager by name if you can find it, and hand over a printed CV.

The students who get hired treat their job search like a small project, not a background task. A simple tracker (date applied, where, follow-up date, status) does two things: it keeps you consistent, and it makes following up automatic instead of something you forget and lose out on.