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One word you will always hear when looking for a job is competition. It’s not the most pleasant of words but it’s an apt description of the situation. While looking to stand out, you might make the mistake of putting in unnecessary details in your resume or CV. Here are 7 things that are better left OUT of your CV to a potential employer.

1. Faith: Don’t think you can win some sympathy from your potential employer by sneaking in your religion into your CV. It won’t impress him/her. Your attempt to win sympathy may come of as you saying, “I’m not the best qualified, but hire me because we share the same faith.” Not a good message.

2. Physical Attributes: Unless you’re applying to be a model, your looks would not be your major attributes. Saying you have rock-hard abs isn’t going to impress your potential boss, especially with the stereotype that people with great bodies are not all that great intellectually.

3. Ethnicity/Home Town: Once you put in things like ethnicity, you’re drawing attention from your qualifications and opening yourself up to stereotypes. Writing your hometown is better than ethnicity, but it usually makes it obvious. Leave it out completely.

4. Sexual Orientation: Don’t put it there. There’s an unofficial Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on this. There’s absolutely no reason to put this there. So DON’T! Unless, of course, you are applying for an adult entertainment job.

5. Unnecessary Experience: You were a great sportsman in school, great. But this is not Gladiator, you are applying for. Not everything you did qualifies as work experience, don’t be too eager to include tons of work experience to the point where you include ironing the neighbour’s work uniform for 5 cedis a week. One true job is worth more than 6 make-believe ones.

6. Fashion Tastes: Not all jobs have a dress code, some of them expect you to prescribe a decent attire for yourself. Don’t say you like suits just because you are applying for a bank job. This is better left out of any CV.

7. Unnecessary Skills: You can roll your tongue? Good for you. But don’t put this in a CV! Skills such as typing at 80 words per minute will be a plus no matter what you are applying to do, balancing a basketball on your head for 90 seconds may not. Leave out unnecessary skills from your CV.