Here’s an article that will be of interest to people writing their CV – Top 5 Reasons Why most CVs End Up in the Bin: http://gradvert.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/to-bin-or-not-to-bin-top-5-reasons-why-most-cvs-end-up-in-the-bin/.

I would add two other types of mistakes people make:

– sometimes people forget the purpose of the CV, which is to get them an interview, not the job!
– assuming the person sifting the CVs knows technical shortforms – often CVs are sifted by people with no experience in the field whatsoever.

Naturally before you get to this stage you need to know what work you would love to do. This is a separate topic for the future.