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How to Make your CV your Personal Sales Pitch
Once your CV successfully makes it on a job recruiter’s desk then it has at least 15-20 seconds to capture his or her interest. During this time period your CV is basically “pitching” your skills, experiences and accomplishments and setting you apart from other candidates that have applied to the same vacancy. If your CV fails to “sell” you to the organisation, then it will fail to ensure you are at least short-listed for a possible interview or future reference. Unfortunately, many job applicants fail to “pitch” themselves in their CVs and find to their dismay that the meandering road of job hunting is endless. How then can a job seeker ensure that his/her CV is an effective marketing magnet that does more than traditional CVs? Below you will find the answer to this question:
Never Use “Cookie Cutter” CVs- Hundreds of job applicants that have never sought career advice get pushed into the online tendency of using “cookie cutter” CVs. They copy the basic format that they find online and insert the necessary information with the belief that they have skilfully written a CV. The disadvantage with this approach is simple: a job recruiter that has seen the same CV format more than once will interpret this as lack of originality encompassed with poor CV planning and preparation.
Pitch Your Accomplishments and Not Your Duties: HR managers already know what hundreds of professionals are required to do on a daily basis, so preparing a CV to list your duties is not an effective marketing strategy. This simply means that job seekers writing sentences with “duties included” “responsibilities included”, etc., do not add much weight to their CV and as such do not provide the job recruiter with the information that is needed to persuade him or her to schedule an interview. Your past accomplishments in an organisation should be one of the focuses on your CV. When a job recruiter reads your CV, he should immediately imagine you in his/her organisation accomplishing great results.
Customise Your CV: Resist the temptation of sending the same CV to different organisations. You should fully understand the job requirements and customise your CV based on the information that is provided. This will allow the job recruiter to see the most important information first instead of reading your CV many times to find the information.
Keep it Simple: Complex CV formatting does not increase the chances of getting your CV noticed. CVs that have too many formatting details are distracting and fail to “pitch” the applicant—instead the job recruiter loses focus based on the formatting methods that have been used.
Proper Grammar and Spelling: Failing to proofread and spell check a CV is failing to validate the many claims made. An example of this can be clearly seen in the following sentence: “Ambitous Sales Manager with ten years working experience seeks position in a dynamic company”. The job recruiter that reads this will wonder: how is it that this “ambitous” Sales Manager did not bother to spell check let alone proofread his or her CV?
Structure and Order: The information on your CV should not be presented in a haphazard manner; it should be clear to read and formatted based on a specific structure that effectively “pitches” you. If you have great accomplishments and experiences to mention, then ensure that this information is structured based on the job requirements that you read. The information that relates to the job requirements should always be presented first and anything deemed necessary but not crucial last.
Avoid Gaps and Many Short Working Periods: Year gaps in your CV will turn on a job recruiter’s red light. Gaps can either mean one of two things: you were fired from your past job or something life changing happened during this period to hinder you from working. The opposite is true for many short working periods; they indicate job hopping and lack of commitment to assigned responsibilities.
Update Your CV: A CV that you usedmonths of even years ago should be updated if you have new information to add. It would be rather embarrassing to make it to an interview only to tell the interviewer that you no longer live at X address or work as X company when asked.
Show Leadership Skills: It does not matter the vacancy you are applying for, showing leadership skills can be the determining factor between getting an interview of having your CV pushed away to the archives of “unqualified applicants”.
Use Compelling Adjectives. Use adjectives wisely thorough your CV to “pitch” your accomplishments and skills even more. Some of these include: dynamic team player, skilled problem solver, articulate communicator, innovative leader, etc. However, you should only make do this if you can prove your claim with facts and figures.
Avoid Photographs: Do not send photographs with you CV unless you are asked to do so. It may not be possible to get around this if you are applying to a customer service-related vacancy or any other role where appearance is of paramount importance.
Mention Figures: Many businesses are focused on making money and if your influence in your past job guaranteed record sales, lower production costs and higher profits then make mention of this. Any serious job recruiter that is trying to satisfy the needs of his or her organisation will not think twice about interviewing a candidate that has been responsible for boosting sales and making a company competitive.
Format: Words docs and PDFs are the most common types of CV formats being sent. However, do not assume that every job recruiter has Microsoft Office or Adobe Reader installed on his or her computer. If a different program is used to open the CV, then chances are it will present a skewed appearance. The disadvantage with this is that it will be easily assumed that you did not format the CV in a professional manner. The solution to this is to send more than one format or call the company to ask which format they prefer.
Bullet Points: Do not write your CV in windy fashion that forces the job recruiter to burn his neurons to select important information. Create bullet points throughout your CV with meaningful sentences. This makes the information clearer and also more presentable as well.