It’s 3:00 PM on a Tuesday in Lagos. A recruiter, let’s call her Funke, stares at her laptop screen, a half-empty bottle of water by her side. She has 247 unread applications for a single Product Manager role. The pressure from the hiring manager is mounting. She clicks open another CV. On paper, the candidate is a rockstar: a stellar title from a reputable company, a dazzling list of skills, and a perfectly linear career progression. It looks perfect. Almost too perfect. Funke lets out a sigh, her trained eyes already spotting the subtle inconsistencies. A quick search on LinkedIn confirms her suspicion. The candidate’s real title was “Product Associate,” not “Product Lead.” With a click, the application is moved to the “Rejected” folder.
The Nigerian job market is a battlefield. It’s tough, competitive, and often feels like you’re shouting into a void. In the desperate scramble to stand out, the temptation to stretch the truth, to embellish a skill, or to cut corners on a cover letter is immense. Many applicants think, “It’s just a small white lie,” or “No one reads cover letters anyway.” They couldn’t be more wrong. That “small” lie or generic letter is a blaring siren to a trained recruiter, immediately signaling a lack of integrity or effort.
We decided to pull back the curtain. We spoke to five seasoned Nigerian recruiters and HR managers from the tech, banking, and consulting sectors—on the condition of strict anonymity—to get their unfiltered opinions. What are the CV lies that make them instantly reject a candidate? What cover letter catastrophes make them cringe? This is the tough-love, no-holds-barred advice you need to ensure your application gets noticed for all the right reasons.
The CV: Your Passport or Your Prison?
Your CV is the single most important document in your job search. It’s meant to be your passport to an interview. However, for many applicants, it becomes a self-imposed prison, trapping them in a cycle of rejections because of easily avoidable mistakes and outright fabrications.
The “Slight” Exaggeration That Ends Your Candidacy
The Lie: Turning a “Marketing Intern” role into a “Marketing Associate” position. Claiming you “managed a team” when you were just the most senior member. Inflating your sales figures or the budget of a project you worked on.
What the Recruiter Really Thinks: A recruiter from a top consulting firm in Lagos was blunt: “This is the most common and the most foolish lie. It’s an instant red flag for us. Integrity is everything in our line of work. If a candidate lies about their title or responsibilities, our immediate thought is, ‘What will they lie about to a client?’ We always verify. A simple background check, a call to a former HR department, or even a discreet check of their LinkedIn profile and their former colleagues’ profiles will expose this in minutes. It’s not clever; it’s naive.”
The Consequence: This isn’t just a rejection for the current role. “Once we catch a candidate in a lie like this, they are blacklisted from our system,” another HR manager in the tech space added. “We share notes. The Lagos corporate scene is smaller than you think. You’re not just losing one opportunity; you’re damaging your professional reputation.”
The Skills Section Fantasy Island
The Lie: Listing a dozen software programs you’ve only opened once. Claiming “Fluency in French” when you can barely order a coffee. Rating yourself an “Expert in Excel” when you struggle with a VLOOKUP or Pivot Table.
What the Recruiter Really Thinks: “My personal pet peeve!” said a tech recruiter. “We see ‘Proficient in Python’ all the time. Then we send a basic Codility test, and the person can’t even write a simple ‘for loop’. It’s a complete waste of everyone’s time. We design our interview process to test the skills you claim to have. When your CV writes a cheque that your abilities can’t cash, it’s incredibly frustrating for us and deeply embarrassing for the candidate. It shows a lack of self-awareness.”
The Consequence: You might get past the initial screening, but you will be exposed during the assessment or technical interview. The result is a guaranteed rejection and a note in your file that you exaggerated your skills, making it harder to be considered for future, more suitable roles.
The Curious Case of the Disappearing Employment Gap
The Lie: Manipulating your employment dates to hide a period of unemployment. For example, stating you worked at Company A from “2021 – 2022” when you actually left in February 2022 and were unemployed for the rest of the year.
What the Recruiter Really Thinks: “We are human. We know that life happens,” explained a recruiter from the banking sector. “People get laid off, they take time off for family, they go back to school, they try a business that fails, or they just need a mental health break. The gap itself is almost never the problem. The problem is the dishonesty. Trying to hide it makes us suspicious. What are you trying to cover up? We would much rather see an honest timeline with a brief, professional explanation like, ‘Mar 2022 – Sept 2022: Career Break for Professional Development (Completed certifications in X and Y)’. Honesty builds trust. Deception destroys it.”
The Consequence: If discovered during a background check, this can lead to a withdrawn job offer. It creates a foundation of distrust before you even begin.
The Cover Letter: Your First Impression or Final Destination?
Many Nigerian job seekers treat the cover letter as an afterthought, a tedious formality. From the recruiter’s perspective, it’s the opposite. The CV shows what you’ve done. The cover letter is your chance to show who you are and why you care.
The “To Whom It May Concern” Catastrophe
The Mistake: Using a generic, lazy salutation like “Dear Sir/Ma” or “To Whom It May Concern.”
What the Recruiter Really Thinks: “This is the first sentence, and you’ve already told me you don’t care enough to spend three minutes on research,” one recruiter lamented. “With LinkedIn, it is ridiculously easy to find the name of the Head of HR, the department head, or the recruiter for the company. Addressing me by my name shows initiative. ‘Dear Sir/Ma’ shows you’re just firing off applications like a machine gun, hoping one lands. I am immediately less interested.”
The Unforgivable Sin: Getting the Company’s Name Wrong
The Mistake: The classic copy-paste error. You end your passionate letter by stating how excited you are for the opportunity to join “Guaranty Trust Bank”… when you’re applying to “Access Bank.”
What the Recruiter Really Thinks: All five recruiters we spoke to had the exact same, one-word reaction: “Delete.” One elaborated: “There is no excuse and no recovery from this. It is the ultimate proof of carelessness and a total lack of genuine interest. It’s insulting to the company and a complete disqualification. End of story.”
The Regurgitated CV and the Wall of Text
The Mistake: Writing a cover letter that is just a boring summary of your CV in paragraph form, or writing a single, intimidating block of text with no breaks.
What the Recruiter Really Thinks: “I have your CV open right next to your cover letter. Why would I want to read the same information twice?” asked a tech HR manager. “Your cover letter should connect the dots. Tell me a story. Pick the ONE most relevant achievement from your CV and expand on it, linking it directly to a problem or goal mentioned in our job description. And please, for the love of God, use short paragraphs. We are scanning dozens, sometimes hundreds, of these a day. Make it easy for me to read. A wall of text is a visual nightmare. I will likely just skim the first and last lines and move on.”
Red Flags You Didn’t Even Know You Were Waving
Sometimes, the most damaging mistakes are the small, seemingly insignificant details that collectively paint a picture of unprofessionalism.
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- Your Email Address: “If I get an application from an address like `hotguy_2002@yahoo.com` or `princess_belemzy@hotmail.com`, I have to question the candidate’s professional judgment before I even open the CV,” one recruiter admitted. “It takes five minutes to create a free, professional email like `Firstname.Lastname@gmail.com`. Not doing so shows a lack of basic professional awareness.”
- Typos and Bad Grammar: “A single typo might be forgivable, but a CV or cover letter riddled with grammatical errors is a major red flag. It screams ‘lack of attention to detail.’ If you are this careless with your own application—a document that represents you—how careless will you be with company reports or client emails?”
– File Naming and Format: “When a candidate sends a CV saved as a Microsoft Word document (`.doc`) instead of a PDF, the formatting can get completely messed up on our end. When they name the file `My CV.pdf`, it gets lost in a sea of other files. The professional standard is `Firstname-Lastname-CV.pdf`. It’s a small detail that shows you know what you’re doing.”
How to Get It Right: The Recruiter’s Ultimate Wishlist
So, what do recruiters actually want to see? It’s simpler than you think.
Honesty and Authenticity: Be truthful about your experience. Frame it in the best possible light, but don’t lie. Explain employment gaps simply and confidently.
Tailoring and Effort: Show them that you want *this* job, not just *any* job. Customize your CV and cover letter using keywords from the job description. Mention a specific company project or value that resonates with you.
Focus on Impact and Results: Don’t just list your duties. Show your impact. Use the Problem-Action-Result (PAR) model. Quantify your achievements with numbers, percentages, and Naira values wherever possible. “Increased sales by 30%” is infinitely more powerful than “Responsible for sales.”
Meticulous Proofreading: Read your application materials out loud to catch errors. Use tools like Grammarly. Have a trusted friend with a good eye for detail review it for you. A clean, error-free document signals professionalism and high standards.
Conclusion
The Nigerian job market is undeniably challenging. Recruiters aren’t faceless villains looking for reasons to reject you; they are busy professionals searching for the best possible fit under immense pressure. The lies, catastrophes, and red flags discussed here don’t just make their jobs harder; they make it easy for them to eliminate you from the running.
Your application is your personal brand ambassador. It speaks for you before you get a chance to speak for yourself. By treating it with the seriousness it deserves—by being honest, diligent, and strategic—you move your CV from the bottom of the pile to the very top. You signal that you are a detail-oriented, high-integrity, and serious professional. And that is exactly who every recruiter in Nigeria is desperately hoping to find.