By searching online, you’ll be able to find an infinite amount of tips and advice for improving your CV, making it more likely to get past initial screening. While most of this advice is valuable, it can often be quite nebulous and can make it difficult to know where to begin. Tips like “think about your formatting” and “be aware of the tone of language you use” are undoubtedly sound, but can be time-consuming and sometimes confusing to implement in reality.
We’ve listed five pointers that can transform your CV in less than 10 minutes with one goal in mind: to make the job of the recruiter or hiring manager as easy as possible. Remember that if a company has an open role, they need to make a hire, so when they’re giving your CV the once-over, they’re looking for reasons to call and invite you in for an interview, not to dismiss your profile. Help them!
While it can be easy to lose track of the entire purpose of the CV, and only be concerned with your own goals i.e. cramming in everything you want to say, remember who the end client is, and make their job as easy as you can.
As much as you would on your LinkedIn profile, it’s a good idea to follow your name with what you do. Bonus points if this matches the profile you’re applying for! It's also important to specific. Instead of ‘construction professional’, try ‘senior site manager’.
This eliminates guesswork around your level and the exact type of work that you do. If the hiring manager or recruiter can see you’re broadly a match at this point, they’re far more likely to read on, or even click shortlist immediately.
The proverbial jury is still out on where to include your educational background, whether it be before or after the professional experience, but keep in mind that some companies demand a certain level of education i.e. a bachelors’ degree or even a qualification in a certain discipline, such as civil engineering.
If this is a box that needs to be ticked by the hiring manager, and they can’t see this immediately, they may assume it isn’t there and pass over your profile rather than waste time following up to check. Similarly, some roles require candidates to have a professional certification such as a chartered engineer qualification to progress – get that box ticked immediately!
When a role demands a certain combination of skills, particularly if they’re technical, a busy and impatient hiring manager isn’t going to spend lots of time sifting through your professional experience and cross-referencing with the list on the spec. When they’re right there, together in black and white, it’s an easy decision to pick up the phone. Strong documentation skills like this are usually key in most roles too.
Definitely the quickest one on this list to implement, and one that can have a transformative effect on your CV. Serif fonts such as Times New Roman can look blocky and outdated, while a sans-serif choice such as Arial or Calibri is immediately fresher and more pleasing to the eye. When you’ve been staring at CV after CV all day, the little things can really make a difference to a recruiter, and make that all-important first impression.
It’s an obvious one, but too many candidates, particularly those who have worked on complex, multi-stage projects, still resort to dense blocks of text. Much like listicles are the easiest articles to read in a hurry, breaking up large paragraphs make CVs much more attractive to skim through, and thus enable the hiring manager to make a (hopefully positive) decision quickly.
Taking 10 minutes to proactively update your CV before sending out to a role can really make the difference and have you stand out among a large base of applicants, many of whom will have blanket applied for multiple roles without tailoring their CV.
Looking for more advice? Here’s everything you need to know about your CV. Ready to find your dream job? Simply register your CV with us and/or create job alerts tailored to your specific career preferences. Sit back, and let us do the hard work on your behalf.
By Eleanor McShortall
Watch photo by Bradley Ziffer on Unsplash
