5 NEXT-LEVEL CV TIPS

The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a large number of lay-offs, and more are likely to come. We all have to contribute to making this situation better, and after my 8th week of sitting in my bed/home office, unshaven, looking like a homeless person, I decided that my contribution would be to provide some CV tips you might not have seen before.

I’ve been working with recruitment now for about 10 years. I’ve looked at thousands of CVs and I think I have a certain notion of what works and what doesn’t.

These are not the basics. These tips are for people who already know how to write a CV, but are looking for some next level advice from someone who reviews a good number of them on a daily basis.

1. Do not blindly follow expert advice

Yes, that includes the advice in the post you are currently reading. Anyone can call themselves an expert, and in many cases the basis for their expertise is outdated, culturally dependent, or to a large extent based on personal opinion. I have often come across experts who strongly advise against having a CV longer than two pages (and this is a rule I tried to adhere to before I started in recruitment), but in my opinion this is just plain silly.

However, don’t view this as a free pass to finally write your 18-page CV. You should definitely avoid an unnecessarily long CV, but in my opinion, limiting yourself to two pages might in certain cases drastically reduce your chances of being considered for a job. Use the pages you need to describe who you are, what you can do and how you can contribute. Hear what the “experts” have to say and sort out the advice that makes sense to you. You need to be comfortable with your CV, not feel like you’re forced into a format that does not accurately represent you.

2. Organize your inventory

Imagine yourself managing a retail store. To be successful you would showcase items that get people interested, items that are relevant to the consumer you are targeting. If you chose to showcase your entire warehouse stock at the same time, costumers would get confused about what kind of store you are running.

Let’s say the inventory is the sum of all your skills, experience and education, and your CV is your way to showcase your most valuable attributes. To utilise your inventory effectively, you need to organize it, you need to make a list.

You do this by meticulously going through every job you’ve had, then every education/school/course you’ve taken, as well as hobbies you’ve dabbled in. Start at the top. What did you do, any special achievements, however small? Write it all down.

Go through a normal day in your job. Did you communicate with clients? Did you write reports? Did you organize meetings? Did you fix the copier? What kind of software did you use? No task is too small at this point, just get it all down on paper. You can sort out what’s relevant later.

I’ve done this myself and it is time consuming, but definitely worth it. Not only do you get an encyclopaedia of your own skills to use when making resumes and applications, but you also get a higher, more organized awareness of what you are good at and all the things you have achieved. Your self-confidence is improved, and all these aspects are valuable when you get to the next stage, the interview. 

3. Customize

Let’s say you have organized your inventory, or maybe you didn’t bother.

Whether you are applying for a very specific kind of job or for all kinds of jobs in different industry sectors, you should invest some time into tailoring your CV to the job you are applying for. This is where a well-organized inventory comes in handy.

There are several ways you can customize a CV, but in my opinion the most important way is to make sure the skills you possess that are relevant to the position is clearly and often stated. If SAP experience is essential to the job, list it in your summary, and clarify in which jobs you have used SAP and to what extent. You should also make sure that less relevant skills don’t take up too much space. Maybe you sell homemade oven mitts as a side hustle, but if it’s not relevant to the job, don’t put it at the top of your CV. 

I have quite a few times experienced telling candidates that they have a great profile, but that they lack certain essential skills for the job, only to be informed that they actually have a wealth of experience with that specific thing, they just didn’t bother putting it on the CV. Which brings me to my next point…

4. Recruiters are stupid

Not all of us, and not necessarily in a “presidential” way. The thing is, recruiters are great at sourcing candidates, interviewing, knowing the client, managing expectations, negotiating rates and salaries, knowing the labour laws etc., but most of them recruit for several different disciplines and might not have the in-depth technical knowledge to read between the lines of a CV. What might be obvious to a professional, is not necessarily obvious to a recruiter.

Imagine being tasked with buying a power tool, and one important criterion is “dynamic rotation adjustment” or DRA, whatever that is. Even if you’re not an expert in power tools, you’re probably capable of looking at the product specifications, the design, the price, user reviews and choose one that overall satisfies your budget and pre-determined criteria. You would quickly dismiss any models that do not mention DRA in the specs, unaware that DRA is just one of several names for the same functionality. Thereby, because of limited knowledge, you might have turned down the best tool for the job without even knowing it.

In a similar way, a lot of recruiters are very focused on the key words in your CV, so make sure to mirror the job description. Use the same words in the CV as those used by the company hiring. If the recruiter uses an abbreviated version of a term, or vice versa, you should do the same, because sometimes we don’t actually know what it means.

To be fair, it is the recruiter’s job to do the necessary research into the field he or she is recruiting for, but that field might be very complicated, and it can be very time consuming to get a good overview. So do yourself a favour by making the recruiters job easier and include the asked-for keywords (only the ones you possess) in your CV.

For the same reasons, a recruiter might not naturally see the connection between your previous job title and the one you are applying for, even if they are almost identical in nature. So even if it sems unnecessary, elaborate on your experience.

When I was writing my bachelor's thesis at university, my professor told me to write as if I was addressing it to my past self, before I started my education. I think that is a good rule for CVs as well, especially if your job is specialised or complicated in nature. Would your past self fully understand your CV?

5. Agencies like it boring

I’ve seen a lot of visually impressive CVs. Some are like colourful works of art, and they do stand out, even if it sometimes comes at the expense of being informative enough.

I’ve seen CVs that look like subway maps, trees, newspapers, Facebook pages. I genuinely enjoy receiving these creative out-of-the-box CVs that people have obviously invested some time into, but I think they are more effective when applying directly to jobs at smaller to mid-size companies.

I am not able to pass these CVs on to my client as they are, because agencies tend to use a specific CV format so that there is a certain uniformity in what we present to our clients. That is why a “fancy pancy” CV provides a challenge. It requires us to spend a lot of time reorganizing and often typing the whole CV into another document, as copy & paste isn’t practically possible. So if you want to make a CV that stands out, I would advise you to also have a boring/normal version to use when applying for jobs through agencies. 

While on the topic of agencies; many of them use databases that asks you to register all your information. Every job, every skill, every school you’ve attended. Usually you have the option to register the bare minimum, then attach your CV to the profile. This is a mistake. You should put in all the information you can. I know this is annoyingly time consuming and can seem pointless, since you’ve already made a CV you are satisfied with. However, these databases often contain several thousand candidates and the recruiters will search the database for candidates possessing certain skills using a search engine that doesn’t account for attached documents. So after investing countless hours into perfecting your CV, you might not turn up in any searches. My advice is to complete the boring stuff.

That’s it for now. I don’t expect everyone to agree with my points. These are my own reflections and you might get quite different advice from the next “expert”. Please let me know if you have any comments, or if there are any other subjects you would like me to cover in the future.