Monthly Archives: February 2010

Word is the Word

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Take the time to format your CV in an accessable format.

Take the time to format your CV in an accessable format.

Word is the word when applying for a job, particularly to a recruitment agency your opening shot is with your CV and the worst thing you can do is send a CV in a format that cannot be edited easily such as Pdf. Whats the difference I hear you say?

Well for a start  all CV’s received by agencies (and some direct hiring companies require CV’s to be presented in a particular fashion that  has to be done swiftly.

As the majority of  agencies use MS Office and in particular MS Word, it means having to convert CV’s to a completely different format. But that should’nt take long you say. You’re absolutely right but tell that to the recruiter who is under pressure and has a hundred CV’s to review before lunch and edit those of use.

If you send your CV in PDF or other format, it will remain most likely untouched and unconsidered at the bottom of the electronic documents submission list. What would you prefer?

Take time about your CV but the simplest thing you can do is send it in the most easily accessable format that can be read, re formated and read by OCR (Optical Character  Recognition) technology used by most recruitment databases for data capture.

Give yourself at least a fighting chance for your next job.

CV Tips

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Make Your CV Work For You

Make Your CV Work For You

Getting your CV right is of utmost importance, especially in the market we are in at the moment. Read these CV tips and better your chances!

The best advise for drawing up your CV is to do it in rough hand first, jotting down everything you have studied and worked at since entering college, this way you can see what is essentially a map of your professional life to date. Once you have done this, you will automatically see what doesn’t have a place in your professional profile. For example, if you studied Nursing and went into the nursing profession once qualified, then your part time summer position in between year 1 and year 2 as a lawn mower in the local community school is not as important as it was back when you were 19!

Be clear and concise with your headings, picking the obvious Education, Working Experience and a Skills Profile. From your rough draft, pick the most important information like the title of your degree, and include your Thesis title from your final year. In Working Experience, clearly give your Job Title and list your daily duties, and then streamline it once again to the most important and relevant daily duties. In your Skills Profile list specific skills learned at college and once again through any work experience.

And finally! Personal Profile. This takes a little bit of extra thinking! This is where you sell yourself.  Although I am mentioning it last it should be at the top of the CV.  The Personal Profile/ Synopsis is the core of you and your career to date in a short paragraph at the beginning of your CV. From your rough draft, put together a paragraph about yourself incorporating your work to date, essentially telling any prospective employer about yourself in your career.  Make it relevant to each individual position you apply for.  Generic profiles do not work as well as a targeted synopsis.  What are the company looking for.  Address how you can fill these requirements.  This should be enough to make them read on!

You can see more CV tips here.

Jackie Brown Medical Expands Once Again

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Jackie Brown Medical Grows

Jackie Brown Medical Grows

Jackie Brown Medical are proud to announce further growth.

Experienced Medical and Science Recruiter Elaine Lambert has just joined our team here at Jackie Brown Medical. Elaine comes to us from Techstaff International Ltd where she specialized in Science Recruitment, specifically Environmental Science recruitment. While at Techstaff, Elaine built up a fantastic relationship with a vast number of clients and is looking forward to working with them once again.

Elaine has 5 years Recruitment experience and is “delighted to be a part of the continued expansion of Jackie Brown Medical”.

Elaine’s science background, medical knowledge and personable nature will make her an invaluable part of the team at Jackie Brown Medical.

Elaine can be reached at elaine@jackiebrownmedical.ie or on (01) 2016363.

Bank on It

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From ATM to AMT (Advanced Manufacturing Technology)

From ATM to AMT (Advanced Manufacturing Technology)

Banking on it, the banking industry in Ireland today is suffering with almost 800 jobs are going in Bank of Scotland, Ireland/ Hallifax. Today people are looking elsewhere for employment prospects that offer security and good salaries.

Currently those conditions only appear to exist in either the public sector at senior clerical officer grades or within certain growth sectors in the Irish economy such as Medical Device Manufacturing or within Medical Sales. Both of these sectors are exhibiting phenomenal growth despite the current down turn.

Positions such as those for Medical Technical Sales rep, Chief Science Officer, or Senior Injection Moulding Engineer are on offer from a variety of major employers such as Vistakon, Mergon, KCI, Medtronic or HSL. All these positions offer considerable career prospects and attractive salaries that still hark back to the good old days of the early naughties.

A New Order

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Back to the Brain Drain of the Eighties

Back to the Brain Drain of the Eighties

A New Order seems to have decended on the Irish employment front with salaries being one of the most obvious signs that things have changed in Ireland and that the Celtic Tiger is becoming more and more of a distant memory.

The New Order today for job applicants requires greater flexibility in taking on job roles that require increased duties for in most cases salaries as much as 15 to 20% less than previously paid less than  two years ago and job descriptions that have expanded responsibilities which would have previously merited increased pay but now are considered mandatory and simply part of the job.

Additionally we see greater flexibility demanded of candidates required to take work further and further away from home requiring longer commutes and in some cases having to be transferred overseas to sister offices whilst the current economic conditions prevails.

Job seekers should consider this as temporary however as these were similar conditions some of our earlier readers may remember existed in the eighties when emigration was the order of the day. But that order changed too and then came the boom of the mid nineties bringing us to the recent present.

The key point to remember is things do change no matter how bleak or omnipresent that they can appear. Our current downturn will change but it requires willingness to accept change to current or previous existing terms and flexibility to continue working in order to survive the harsh conditions we must go through today to meet the eventual upturn of tomorrow.