Just finished writing your CV? Congratulations! But before you eagerly send it off with a bunch of snazzy job applications because you think it’s the absolute bees’ knees, take a minute to double check what your CV is really saying about you.
Your CV is your self-marketing material for the professional world, and so you want to make sure you demonstrate all your skills, achievements and experience in a clean and concise way to prove to potential employers you’re the right person for the job. As a result, writing a CV might seem like writing in code because the formula is so precise. But meticulous care must be taken when formatting your CV because recruiters are looking out for very specific things, such as whether your skills are relevant to the role. The average recruiter spends seconds on a CV to see if an applicant is suitable for a position, so you’ve got to make sure you hook, line and sinker from the off. Still think your CV is top notch? We’re here to tell you what your CV might really be saying about you!
Relevant skills
So in your work history and education sections you’ve probably listed every skill you’ve learnt and developed to date because you think it’ll make you look extremely qualified and knowledgeable. While it’s not a bad thing to show off your abilities, listing all your qualifications is not the smartest move. Recruiters want specifics. They want to know exactly why you’re the best person for the job, and so you need to prove why they should want you more than other applicants. Therefore, if you’re applying for a technical engineering position, the recruiter’s probably not so interested in your Microsoft Word abilities and more interested in your engineering experience, so make sure you tailor your CV for the role.
So, how should you write your skills in your CV? Well, you should try and pair the skills you have to the skills listed in the job description, that way you’re proving to the recruiter you’re the best match! You shouldn’t stop there though. Make sure you back up your skills with evidence of how you obtained or developed them; giving examples proves your skills are credible. For instance , if the job description states that the role requires someone with ‘an eye for detail’, state that you have an eye for detail, and give a reason – maybe you spent many hours proofing essays at university, or your previous role required you to review products before they were sent to trade. Understand? So, you must make sure the skills you’re listing on your CV are relevant to the job description and that you’ve provided examples of their development, otherwise the recruiter won’t really see your true value.
Buzzwords
We’re sorry to say it, but while listing your skills on your CV you probably stumbled into the trap of overusing buzzwords, especially in your personal statement section. Yes, you might well be innovative, a team player, a strategic thinker, have extensive experience and a proven track record, but if you stuff your CV with these overused terms that don’t really prove anything to the recruiter without some evidence, you’re not even going to land an interview.
You need to tell the recruiter that there’s more substance to you than a stream of stale adjectives. Trickle just a small handful of buzzwords through your CV and use them to your benefit. Some great buzzwords to use are dynamic verbs such as, ‘improved’, ‘achieved’, ‘created’ and ‘trained’ because they show you’ve made a positive difference in your previous role, and that you can bring so much talent to this new position that will help the company excel.
Email address
When listing contact details on your CV you MUST include a professional email address. Yep, we might sound like a broken record stuck on repeat since before Mick Jagger looked like a handbag, but we see a huge amount of CVs that have ridiculously unprofessional email addresses branded on them. All you need to do is use your first name and last name to create an appropriate email address, such as ‘jack.smith@email.com’. By the way, it’s perfectly fine to add a few numbers, underscores of hyphens if the email address with your name has already been taken. If a recruiter sees you’ve got a dodgy email address, trust us, your CV is likely to go straight in the reject pile.
Hobbies and interests
The hobbies and interests section of your CV can be a tricky one. You shouldn’t be afraid of letting your personality shine in your CV – recruiters want to get to know the real you. However, you don’t want to risk putting a recruiter off with weirdly unusual interests that only your mum and BFF know. So what do you do? We suggest you include hobbies and interests that either relate to the role you’re applying for, or offer something intriguing about yourself, e.g. have you volunteered, or travelled the world or are you a qualified scuba diver?
It’s important to remember that you shouldn’t list interests for the sake of it. If you’ve listed ‘socialising’ because you think it makes you sound outgoing and confident then you’re living in a cloud of delusion; a recruiter’s more likely to translate ‘socialising’ as ‘likes to gossip and may turn up to work hungover’. If you can’t think of any genuine interests that are going to benefit your application, leave this section out entirely and use the extra space to expand on skills that will make your application stronger.
No fibbing
If you plant a lie on your CV we can guarantee a recruiter will spot it almost immediately. Even if you think you’ve got your back story sussed, sooner or later you’ll be caught out like this guy. You might think you need to lie on your CV to impress a recruiter, but all it will really say about you is that you’re dishonest – hardly the first impression you want to make.
Know your CV
You really need to know every single detail on your CV – to the point where you can probably recite it by heart to the recruiter. If you’re in an interview and you don’t know your CV inside out, you might find yourself in a rather embarrassing situation. The interviewer is going to ask about every section to not only offer you the chance to explain you skills, abilities and experiences in more detail, but to see if you’re trying to pull the wool over their eyes, and to see if you’re a good fit for the company.
Fingers crossed you now feel fairly confident with your CV, or at least feel confident enough to run a beady eye across it and double check it’s good to go
