How to write a CV in the age of AI!

Yep, we are living at the beginning of a New Age and a lot of things are changing - mainly from a technology perspective. In my world this is changing how companies find people, which should be very relevant to you and your CV!

I pride myself in having a very high hit rate in identifying the nationality of someone by their CV (its a little game I have to entertain myself sometimes). All I can say is that there is clearly no one global rule on CV writing! Until now...

I've seen them all. The random 2-3 liner of a profile to the ‘shopping list’to the adjectivally drowned, flamboyant and self-indulgent essay, to the bullet point obituary, often depending on your career stage (no pun intended)...

I’m sure the time will soon come that easily accessible AI options can read a CV, any social media account you may have and present a short summary on your suitability for a role and particular company. Not long after that they’ll be able to cross reference that with your DNA profile, supplied from the skin cells in your computer keyboard and determine which psychotic tendency you are most likely to demonstrate in the work place (we all have them). But we are not there yet. Leave that stuff for your kids to worry about. Right now, if you are wanting to find the next best thing in your career development, keep it simple. And Concise.

Waxing lyric on a CV is a wonderful way of passing the time convincing yourself you are deep into your job search. Honestly, depending on the style (see above) I can skim read a CV in about 20-30 seconds and determine if a profile is relevant. I’ve estimated that a person (ok, me) spends about 90-180 minutes writing a CV (some people (mainly me again) definitely take longer, why I don’t know). Doing the maths on the ratio of CV writing time to the reading CV time is beyond me. But if you can, hopefully it illustrates my point. My point being that AI reads your CV even quicker.

Most ‘AI options’ in this space were not much more than an advanced word search functions or online psychometric assessment. But that’s changed and changing. And the ‘AI Age’ CV needs to keep pace.

What does this mean to you?

1) Don’t wax lyric as much as I’ve done so far in getting to my point.

2) Create ‘teasers’ by using words and phrases specific to the area you are skilled in or wish to pursue.

3) Don’t pontificate on how much value you are/were to your current/previous company. Put that in P&L terms. Something someone running a business will also value. And AI can assess and value.

4) Clear your Social Media profile up! Seriously. Or indulge your schizophrenic tendencies and try and hide behind your 'other' real online profile. I don't know if that will work but it could do...

5) All the ‘soft’ stuff like personality, style, attitude etc. That comes in an interview. It could come as a surprise, but I’ve NEVER read a CV that says someone is NOT a team player, enthusiastic, energetic, out the box thinker, highly valued, skilled... and is probably the only person keeping their company together!

6) Write it as a hiring manager who wants to read a CV of someone who was going to help solve their business challenges - think relevant technical skills and quantifiable performance measurements. That means putting it in $$$ by the way. If you didn’t get that, just go back to the technical skills bit.

But honestly if you want to write a 3-8 pager of a CV, Just Go For It! It doesn’t really matter now. It’ll still be read far quicker than you thought about it!

The Age of the CV writer is dead! All hail The Age of the CV writer!