Tag Archives: CV

Format your CV

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Tidy it Up

Tidy it Up

Please format your CV!

A few key points to note before sending your CV out:

  • Font – is it clear and concise
  • Font Size – trust me, 12 is big enough!
  • Bold/ Italics – Bold is best for titles, the rest in plain text. I find that Italics can be a bit hard on the eye
  • Use the tab button for spacing!
  •  Do not forget the dates, the company name and your job title

So whether you are a Nurse, a Medical Sales Rep, a Chief Medical Scientist or a Radiographer, it helps those reading it to format your CV!

No CV?

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Start from Scratch

Start from Scratch

No CV? Why not try downloading our CV layout and start there?

http://www.jackiebrownmedical.ie/advice/cvlayout.php?url=cvlayout

In this day and age it is the most essential tool for the working person! No CV is a no-no. Your CV should have a permanent place on your desk top where it can scream at you to update!

With sites like Linkedin and connections being made through social networks, it really is essential that you have a CV drawn up.

If you have no CV don’t worry, sort it with our layout!

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.

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

Give something back

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Interview and CV preparation skills

Interview and CV preparation skills

It’s always nice to give something back to those who you work with. In the case of recruitment its nice to give something to those that recruiters most depend on to ensure their business’s continue to function;-ie the job seekers.

Many Irish recruitment agencies spend a lot of time taking CV’s but not giving  enough feedback to those who are unsuccessful  in their application but none the less have taken the time to respond to the advertisements that the agency has  run. If they didn’t reply the agencies wouldn’t  have the CV’s they require to support their clients requirements and by extension they would have nothing to offer to sell their recruiting services.

As recruiters work continually involves the professional assessment and presentation of CV’s and daily interviewing of candidates, they are uniquely qualified to present valuable insights and advice to candidates, and to enhance their candidates with the maximum possibility of achieving success in not only winning an interview, but also maximising their competitive potential against opposition at their individual interview.

The NRF has recently taken measures to address this and has set up workshops to educate those who require information on a variety of topics on areas such as CV and interview preparation. Jackie Brown Medical, an NRF award winning recruitment agency in particular, has provided it’s applicants with specialised tips and advice on a wide variety of professional topics to ensure and to enhance their job hunting prospects in today’s challenging employment market for medical professionals seeking work in the medical jobs recruitment market.

Please feel free to visit our website to read our testimonials and to review our advice center topics if you are looking for a winning CV or tips on how to get the best out of agencies and interviews. Its worth your while and our pleasure to help.  After all, its nice to give something back.