Three quarters of employers would reject a CV due to lack of detail on previous roles and achievements.

Research by iProfile.org reveals firms are most interested in previous workbased achievements when considering CVs – but applicants often fail to focus on them.

In a study of 1,000 jobseekers and 200 employers it found the key elements an employer looks for in a CV, and whether jobseekers delivered.

Although the most important factor for recruiters is evidence of work experience (37 percent expected this), work-based achievements came second on 23 percent and 73 percent said they had rejected candidates because they lack past details of past accomplishments.

The lack of detail could be due to candidates not spending enough time writing their CV. Some 71 percent spend less than two hours compiling their CV – just 19 percent spend longer than a day on it. Very few keep their CVs updated on a monthly basis: only six percent. Nearly 80 percent wait until they are looking for a new job, which can lead to key achievements being forgotten or left off – 39 percent had to use their records to recall their achievements and 10 percent found it very hard to remember them at all.

Summing up the research iProfile.org states: "Is this achievement amnesia a symptom of a quintessentially British unwillingness to 'sell' or 'talk up' our achievements? Possibly, but the research seemed to suggest that it has more to do with the way that we all compile CVs - often relegating CV writing only to times when we start looking for work, and spending less than two hours on the task. And clearly, we're struggling to remember the great things we've done when it really matters."