When you’re applying for a new job do you ever think about the proportion of applications that never make it past the first screening? I’m sure someone somewhere has the stats on the exact percentage, but from my own experience I’d say well over 50% get binned at the first stage. A lot isn’t it? Do you ever think about what you can do to make sure you’re not one of them? I bet you’re thinking “that will never happen to MY application – I’m really good at what I do, and I’ve made the effort to make my CV look really smart and impressive - I’ve used loads of different fonts and colours to make it stand out, I’ve put everything into neat little text boxes and I’ve even put my photo on it so they can see how good looking I am”. WRONG!! Unless you’re working in creative marketing or design these are the CVs that are first for the bin. Why? I know it seems a bit unfair but firstly it’s a technical issue – most recruitment agencies (and large companies) nowadays use pretty sophisticated recruitment software to process and sort their applications. Trouble is, most of these programmes can’t cope with fancy text boxes and a rainbow of colours, and they usually don’t like photos. What they want (and what the recruiting staff also want!) is a clear and easy to follow format –
Name
Contact details
Key skills
Qualifications
Previous positions – in reverse date order, with dates to let them know how long you were actually in the role
Name of employer
Job title
Responsibilities
Key achievements
It is SO easy – remember that your average recruiter will be looking at 10, 20, 30, or even more CVs a day. The ones they want to see aren’t the ones with dancing genies and flashing colours – they just confuse the issue. The ones that will make it through the initial screening stage are the ones that are clear, concise and readable.
We get a lot of applications from people who have used a generic CV formatting tool from the internet – nothing wrong with that in principle, some of them are really good. Some of them aren’t though, so be careful which one you choose and make sure that you customise it to make it look personal – leaving lots of fields unfilled or with the advisory text still in them makes it look like you can’t really be bothered to go to the effort of making a personalised application.
Length is important too – I always think of a CV as a kind of calling card – it should give just enough information to let people know you’ve got the right sort of experience and to entice them to contact you to find out more. When you meet them face to face at interview you can tell them all about how great you are and why you’re the perfect person for the job. In the meantime, try and keep the CV length to no more than 3 pages (the standard advice is 2 pages, but nowadays with people changing career and employers more frequently it is a little bit short to be realistic).
There is one rule that supersedes all the above though, and it is really really important. DON’T TELL UNTRUTHS ON YOUR CV. There are several good reasons not to do this, but the most important one is that if you do get a job based on an inaccurate CV, it almost always negates your employment contract. That means your employer has every right to sack you, no matter how well you’re doing the job. That makes a pretty major own goal, don’t you think?
So in summary, to make your CV attractive to recruiters and potential employers and get past the first stage – keep it neat, keep it clean, and keep it honest. Easy peasy!!
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