Category Archives: CV tips

Suits you Sir!

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Suits you Sir! Just as we wear different clothes to suit an occasion, when looking for a job it is sometimes worth considering these CV tips to suit each prospective employer or position you are applying for and to present your best assets accordingly. Consider your skills, your experience and more importantly- you!

A bad CV can be as bad as no suit at Interview. Think of how you want to look.

A bad CV can be as bad as no suit at Interview. Think of how you want to look.

For instance if you are a specific engineer you would phrase your CV to emphasise your skills to suit the role required and also give relevent examples of where your technological skills, experience or software abilities will complement the specific job required.

If you issue a generic, one size fits all CV to every client you will naturally find your CV appears to have limited if any success as a result of your CV content being limited or only partially relevant.

Having a CV for a specific type of role, either Radiologist, Nurse, Manager, Engineer, Sales Rep, Trainer or Technician means that the CV content will exlusively reflect the required role. It also means, if you have several years experience you can offer your best and most comprehensive CV without running out of  CV space room without producing an overly long CV.

Similarly having several specific letters means you can choose specifically to present your technical, personal  or management skills exclusively depending on what the Job Description calls for. This is helping the employer or agency and they will be greatful for it.

Once more this allows you to make your best possible presentation and further increases your chances of being called for interview. This of course then means you only have the issue of  deciding what you will choose to wear to  interview. After all it suits you to look and feel at your best when you have presented your best assets.

The Right Job

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The Application

The Application

Applying for the right job is paramount in this day and age. It is an employer’s market right now so your application success depends on a variety of moves.

A few tips to point you in the right direction!

The Application

  • Make sure you quote the job reference yes, but more importantly the Job Title!
  • Read the Job Spec. It is imperative you are qualified to do the job – whether educationally or years experience. Some people require both! Most importantly, if you can’t do the job don’t apply for it! It really won’t be the right job for you.
  • The questions. Answer the questions given at the end of the job before you click send. It saves a lot of time so be nice to the kind people receiving your application?

The Cover Sheet/ Email:

  • Let the person receiving your mail know why you are applying. They really do read it, so give a small synopsis of yourself right and your working experience.

The CV

  • If you are happy with it, attach it!

The Send Button

  • Does exactly what it says on the tin!

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.

Less Haste- More Speed

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Are you what they want?

Are you what they want?

Less haste-more speed as the saying goes. I recently received over a dozen CV’s from candidates applying for jobs that they were quiet obviously not qualified to do, both in terms of experience and qualifications. After the tenth CV I became slightly paranoid and read my job descriptions again and realised they were correct and more than that were very specific in what I required from applicants.

For example, I was in one instance looking for a Degree Qualified  Production Manager or Manufacturing Engineer with experience of Injection Moulded Medical Devices. What I received was a Production Manager with none of the other attributes, no degree, no medical device experience and no moulding experience?

Obviously the candidate was not suitable and was informed of this fact. That didnt help me as both his and my time was wasted.

This made me realise that the candidates were not or could not have been reading the job specification properly or fully before application or they would have realised this and not wasted their time.

Granted these are difficult times and people are frantically trying to find new jobs because of urgent financial commitments and they are in difficult situations, However that also means their time is even more valuable and probably better spent researching where suitable jobs are or by presenting their skills correctly and sending their CV’s to employers or Agencies that have positions that match their skills and experience

Consider this; if a candidate replies to a live requirement immediately that they are suitable for, if they are the first applicant they stand psychologically 1st in line for the job with the employer as that employer may require that person immediately and lean strongly towards the first suitably qualified candidate.

At the very least a requirement may be closing out and the applicant may have missed out on a closing application date whilst wasting time applying to an unsuitable  post.

Applying to a requirement you dont suit means you are looking in the wrong direction at the wrong time and you may miss out to someone else who has taken their time selecting a suitable job and as a result won out ahead of you simply because they took the time to read the Job specification.

Send your CV in Word format only

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Use Word for your CV

Use Word for your CV

For job seekers out there currently in the market, please remember to use only a Word.doc version of your CV to send to Recruitment Agencies.

Word is the most commonly used format and can be edited, changed and read easily.

Client Companies also do not like CV’s to be submitted in any other format than Word.

Other formats eg JPeg or PDF do not look as well, do not copy or edit as well and can take up alot of time to translate back in to Word.

 

If it’s not in Word format, your CV will not get the full attention it should as it will go down the priority list over someone else’s who’s CV is in Word and is good to go.

If you are looking for a job – only send your CV in a Word.doc format so it will get immediate attention and be more appealing to a Client Company

Referees and References

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Help yourself-make sure your References are contactable

Help yourself-make sure your References are contactable

Referees and references should  be considered as vital a part of your CV as your CV content and layout after all its little point in going to the trouble of producing a wonderfully laid out CV without  having consideration of  the reliability and effectiveness of your references.

One should always be assured that the referees you choose are happy to give you a reference to begin with as generally -in particular with large multinationals, they may have a policy of not providing more than a factual reference; ie the person worked here between said dates as a “fill in Job Title”

These references serve to provide little support for an applicant and can in some instances appear to be suspiciously vague or reserved as if the former employer is anxious not to incriminate themselves-which in some instances may be the case given that candidates are entitled to check references obtained or stored under the data protection act. 

As a professional, it is in your interest to obtain reliable references- ideally in advance of departure from a current employer as your referee may move on-in which case your reference is lost or may lose its veracity as a person who worked indirectly with you may only be able to provide a standard rather than glowing reference. With this in mind it is worth your while to keep in contact with your referees. Professional Social Networks such as LinkedIn can be ideal for this as members will voluntarily update their own records and are easily found on this excellent website.   

Written references are another form of reference insurance because at least you have a hard copy from your referee who may not be available when you require them due to holidays or work commitments that make them unavailable for immediate comment but will at least buy you time.

At the end of the day, references are a general assessment but the ultimate decision lies with the employer to decide to take on the candidate but if the reference concurs with the assessing employers opinions their decision making process will be moderately more assured than if they have to rely on dated, inaccurate or vague references which do more harm than good to your application.

Do your homework in advance and do not leave it until the job offer to look for your references- even if you think they will be easy to get. That may be so, but you should treat your references with as much consideration as your passport. Ensure you have a minimum of two; but better still three references, that you can call on or contact via e-mail or phone contact as you never know when you may need them and if you have them in advance  your application has a far greater chance of success.  Remember your references are up to you.

Prepare to Win

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Be Prepared to Win

Be Prepared to Win

Prepare to win if you want to win at the interview.  Preparation improves confidence and performance at interviews allowing far greater communication of your skills as you will much more relaxed and at ease. 

Preparation takes a variety of  forms.It involves actively reading up on the target company, their products and their strategy in business and if possible reading up on or talking to people already working for or who have previously worked for the target company. The more prepared you are the more organised you appear at interview and the more attractive you appear as a recruitment prospect.

Be sure of what you want to say when you are selling your skills as well as yourself. Ask yourself -why would a company hire me? What can I offer over every other candidate coming through the same interview as me? If you can convince yourself realistically that you are a good bet then you are half way there. 

Be keen and enthusastic in your answers, so many candidates fail at interview for lack of interest even though technically they appear to meet all the clients criteria but they simply fail as they dont appear to want the job or  to be hungry enough to want to get it. 

Consider this; would you hire someone if they looked and responded as if they wished they were some where else?

If you want the job you have to be prepared to win and that means doing your homework in advance and not as the teacher walks through the door.