Many times people come to me to ask for help in writing their resumes. Fair enough, I’m “the HR” and the Career Coach. My personal record was to screen about 500 CVs for a single published vacancy, so I pretty know how the recruiters’ minds work. Moreover, I’ve been working in communications for a while, so twisting words in your benefit is another ticked box. However, I insist that people do it themselves (well, at least for the first few iterations). So I thought of writing an article about it, as you might also find it useful when working on your resume.
Writing a CV is a very personal thing and not an easy one. If you spend a reasonable amount of time surfing the internet, you’ll find lots of good pieces of advice, together with templates and best-practices from all industries and job categories. But how to decide what’s good to take on?
Here’s a list of questions I find crucial to ask yourself:
- What’s the purpose of my CV? It’s straightforward, still not everyone gets it! The ultimate scope is that the recruiter (or whomever reads it first) puts it in the right pile -or folder- interested to find out more about you. This is your ticket to the interview. Make it relevant from the beginning by writing a profile to summarize and bring the essence of your expertize and key strengths or skills, and make sure it matches the job requirements. This should differentiate you from other candidates in the first 30 seconds.
- What from my CV is not in tune with the practices in the country or domain I will be applying for jobs? Pimping your CV with a company from UK (let’s say), when you want to apply for jobs in the Netherlands is not always a good idea, unless you checked they know what they’re talking about. Do your research to learn about certain standards like lengths, structure, information to avoid or not to miss, making sure you show a good understanding of how things are done there. Take out your birth date, marital status and nationality; most companies are advocating Diversity & Inclusion, and these should anyway not be relevant criteria to judge a candidate.
- How is my CV memorable? Your resume is not an autobiography book, but rather an extension of your business card. You would pay attention to how your business card looks, right? I do recall memorable CVs of 8 pages, and also those with misspellings and clichés (like hard worker, results-driven, fast learner and team player). But remember that before content is the format. Simple tips to make your CV stand out from the crowd is to use two colours and a different font that the usual Times New Roman size 12. And do Pdf it, please, so it will show the right formatting on all devices.
And here comes the tough part:
- What’s the essence of me? What to write and how? How to present yourself succinctly enough not to miss the essential, and in a way that puts you in value? I have two simple recommendations. First, use verbs of action at past tense, measurable references and achievements instead of general job responsibilities or adjectives. Say “led a team of X senior marketing professionals”’ / “managed a marketing budget of X EUR”/ “drove implementation of X marketing campaigns across X countries” / “increased with X% the Inbound Marketing ROI” “successful and experienced marketing manager, able to efficiently manage budgets” or “implementing marketing campaigns in time on budget”. Let others judge how experienced or successful you have been.
Secondly, use a maximum of 5 bullet points for each role description, thinking of what is the core of the role and what you are proud to have achieved.
At the end of the day, the companies are hiring you for what you leave behind to contribute to their success.
