You only get one chance to make a first impression!
As an Employment consultant I have been responsible for assisting many people to gain employment and develop professionally. I offer experience in reverse marketing candidates to employers, delivering client job-readiness training, to providing CV critiques, professional and personalised feedback, and CV upliftment.
Recurring themes when it comes to basic CV mistakes are often the reasons candidates are overlooked preventing them from securing those all-important interview offers.
So, what is a CV and what purpose does it serve?
A CV is generally recognised as the principal document and a self-marketing tool that outlines a person's academic and professional history used when applying for jobs. The sole purpose of a CV is to highlight experiences, skills, strengths, attributes, and job suitability to a prospective employer in order to secure a job interview.
Simple, huh!!
1. Industry targeting: Tailor your CV to the job
As a norm, a generic approach when constructing your CV is not going to provide the desired impact particularly where industry specific or hard skills are sought and can ultimately lead to your application being rejected. Many recruiters now invest in ‘applicant tracking systems’ (more commonly known as ATS) as part of their hiring and recruitment process. This software allows businesses to filter and organise applicants based on experience and skill sets, it’s also worth knowing that approximately 70% of applications in the UK are rejected during ATS screening.
These CVs are likely to compromise your application, therefore, tailoring your CV is vital if you want to stand out to recruiters. However, before attempting to construct your CV, running a job search is a productive way of identifying the requirements of your target jobs to gain an insight into what skills, experience and qualifications employers look for in potential candidates. In turn this should provide you with a platform to work from to create a CV that is better aligned with your chosen sector or job.
2. Readability: CV structure, format & flow
Your CV should be engaging and filled with content that is relevant to your target job. Furthermore, it needs to have impact, structure, and flow; formatted so that a recruitment professional is able to easily scan.
Creating succinct content by following a simple but effective structure that allows your CV to be easily read greatly increasing the odds of converting your application into an interview.
An engaging CV has a mix of free-writing and bullet points to highlight key skills or duties and is normally built up of several key elements. Dividing your CV into specific sections will allow it to follow a logical flow and should include, Contact Information and Professional Title, Personal Statement, Skills Profile, Career Summary/Employment History, Education/Qualifications.
Key style guidelines include selecting an ‘easy-on-the-eye’ font such as Arial, or Calibri, ideally between 10-12 depending on the font you’re using and making section headings bold and slightly larger than the rest of the contents and underlined if preferred. The 'Career Summary/Employment History' section, written in reverse-chronological order, will ensure attention is drawn to current endeavours and using a professional template can add ‘kerb appeal’ to your CV too.
3. Email Address: Create a Professional email address
Using an inappropriate email address is an aspect that can sabotage your job application and thwart your prospects of progressing to the next stage.
Proving you are a credible is paramount and showcasing content that creates a bad impression is often used so avoid using details such as, birth year, nicknames, or derogatory terms. If you can, use as much of your full name as possible.
A simple, professional format such as johndoe09@email.com is an ideal example.
4. Job Description Profiles: Standout with well-structured job profiles
The CV job-profile section is where you highlight details of the core responsibilities, duties, achievements, and impact you have had in your current and previous jobs. The purpose of this section is to demonstrate to the recruiter that you possess the experience, knowledge, and skills to fulfil the demands of the role successfully. A well-written job description can improve the chances of being considered for the role and will establish what value you are likely to bring to that position and the wider business.
Using bullet points to highlight core responsibilities will provide the recruiter with a good understanding of the main aspects of your job and how your most marketable skills and experiences align with the recruiter’s candidate profile.
You can add some real value to your role profiles by concluding with ‘key achievements’ that showcase the impact you've had in previous roles.
5. Cover Career Gaps: Structure a brief note on the CV explaining the gap in employment
Career gaps on a CV is often an aspect that can cause an applicant a level of anxiety and with fair reason. Recruiters recognise that not every applicant will have a continuous career history and although CV gaps can be expected, particularly in today’s climate they can cause alarm bells to ring with potential employers who may be uncertain of your work ethic, commitment, or reliability. You should consider minimising their impact by offering a brief explanation like ‘Redundancy due to company downsizing’ and in turn this should erase doubts they may have on you as a suitable hire.
Making sure your career history has flow with specific dates to demonstrate how you’ve transitioned between roles, will paint a clear picture of your endeavours to a hiring manager and selecting a month and year format, (September 2019 – December 2021) can be further enhanced by adding the job title, company name, a brief role overview with bullet pointed job profiles to create the desired impact.
Finally, ensuring your CV falls across two-pages, with clear and concise detail of the profits and gains achieved as a result of your hard work over the past 10 years at least should leave the Recruiter reaching for the telephone.
Comments