Standing out from the crowd

In today's competitive job market, where a single position can attract hundreds of applicants, having a standout CV is more crucial than ever. Your CV serves as your ticket to securing an interview, making it essential to craft a document that captures the attention of hiring personnel amidst the sea of applications. As someone who has reviewed numerous CVs and mentored professionals in their job search, I have compiled a comprehensive guide to help you master the art of CV writing.

In this article, we will delve into key tips, strategies, and best practices to help you create a compelling CV that highlights your achievements, demonstrates your value, and increases your chances of landing that dream job. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting your career journey, these insights will empower you to present yourself in the best possible light and stand out.

If you do not want to read the long post, I have summarized the ten bullet points, and if they capture your attention, you can read the rest of the article:

1. A CV is a trailer, not a movie - The success criteria of a CV is to get an interview call; you will never get a job offer in response to a CV, so keep it brief and interesting.
2. Avoid technical debt - Remove very old achievements from your CV.
3. Do not write job descriptions - Focus on your achievements.
4. Quantify your achievements - Try to include numbers in each of your accomplishments and highlight the business outcomes that were a direct result of your actions.
5. Length of the CV - Keep the CV to no more than two pages
6. Use strong verbs - Highlight your leadership and demonstrate that you can take initiative.
7. Grammar - Focus on I, not we, use the past tense, use active voice, and always write in the first person rather than the third person.
8. Strategic vs Tactical Achievements - Can you demonstrate that you could make an impact even when you were not in the room?
9. Do not add degrees and certifications to your name - No degree or certification is as important to become part of your identity. You are not an MBA; you have an MBA degree.
10. Keywords for bots - Use industry-relevant keywords in your CV, but avoid cliches like "highly energetic", "extremely passionate," etc.

Considerations for CV/Resume/LinkedIn Profiles

I was reading this article which mentioned that Google receives 2 Million applications annually. If you skim through each CV for only 1 second, then it would take one person 23 days working 24/7 to have a glance at each CV. Of course, this is not how it is done at Google, but it shows the sheer volume of applicants some top employers must go through. There are going to be some automated tools that scan the applications for specific keywords and do basic sanity checks. Even after that, the volume will still be in the hundreds for a recruiter. Make sure your CV/resume is tailored to the job requirements and highlights the critical skills that are required in the job.

Do's and Don'ts of a CV/Resume

Here are some things I have learned over the years while going through many profiles.

1. Success Criteria of a CV/Resume

What is the critical success criterion of a CV/resume? I believe it is only to get filtered and get a call for an interview. A CV/resume is like a trailer; we should not make it into a movie. I don't know anyone who sent a CV/resume and got a job offer. A good CV/resume will help you get an interview, and at that stage, the CV/resume has finished.

2. Avoid Technical Debt

Going through several profiles, I have seen many people continue to append content to their first CV, so just like code, the CV starts to accumulate technical debt. I have seen a debate competition trophy from 5th grade in the CV of someone with 12 years of experience. As you grow further in your career, the recent 5 years matter much more than your older experience.

3. Don't write job descriptions, write achievements

I have noticed that many people, instead of writing their achievements, they would write their job descriptions in their profiles. You would see statements like "Responsible for managing this," "Collaborate with SME," "Contribute to continuous improvement," etc. These statements do not instill any confidence in the reader. You are left wondering whether the person was responsible for it, but did they do it? A simple litmus test for this is to check if you can copy-paste the lines from your CV into a new job posting; if the answer is yes, then those lines do not belong in your CV.

4. Quantify your Achievements

You must always try to include numbers with your achievements. This will emphasize them and help to quantify them. Sometimes, technical folks will tell me that they do not have numbers, and then I ask them If "optimizing lines of code by 35%" is a number. Is "improving the availability of a system from 95% to 99% across three years" a number? A before and after picture would be ideal to show your impact.

Make sure you take credit for numbers that are yours. I reviewed an application developer's CV, and they said that when I joined the Telco, it had 3 million subscribers; when I left, it had 30 million subscribers. I asked them, "Are you taking credit for 27 million subscribers?". Ensure you can demonstrate that the numbers are not as good if we remove you from the equation. You can use numbers that are not yours to demonstrate scale, e.g., as an application developer, you can say, "Designed an application for the 30 million subscribers of the Telco with zero downtime". Your number in this application is zero downtime, which is a bigger deal if it is done for 30 million subscribers vs 100,000 subscribers.

Often, I have seen with technology, people limiting themselves to just the individual task, e.g., "Reduced the ETL window from 12 hours to 6 hours", "Increased system availability from 95% to 99%," etc. Add some business contexts to describe your understanding of the criticality and the context. Let's rewrite them to "Reduce the ETL window from 12 hours to 6 hours, which ensured that all insurance claims were processed within their SLA", "Increased system availability from 95% to 99%, which reduced customer escalations by 20X," etc.

5. Length of the CV

I do not recommend that you go for a CV beyond two pages. The hiring person must go through a lot, and you must capture their attention quickly. Most people may not even look at the second page, and some may not scan beyond the first half page. Could you ensure that your summary and key achievements are highlighted in the first half of the page? I ask people, "Are you happy if the hiring person looks at the first half of the page only?" How can you make the length of the CV shorter? Like I said earlier, the last five years of your CV are more critical than older experience. So, as a high-level rule, if you have four positions to highlight, you can use half a page for the latest position, a quarter page for the second last, 1/8th for the next, and only 1 line summary may be enough for the 4th position. This is not a hard rule and may vary, but you can use such techniques to reduce the length.

6. Use Strong Verbs

While it is an admirable trait to be humble, you must highlight your achievements and not undersell yourself in a CV. Highlight your achievements with strong verbs such as "Led this...", "Managed that...", "Transformed it..." and not weak verbs like "Involved in...", "Participated in..." etc.

7. Grammar

While writing the CV, I encourage people to:

• Use I, not we. The purpose is to focus on your achievements and not take credit for the team. You can skip I while writing; instead of saying, "I led the project," you can also say, "Led the project," and it comes across the same way.
• Use past tense, e.g., "I led the project" and not "I am leading the project." You should only write completed achievements, which would be in the past.
• In first person and not third person. Use "I did this" and not "He did this" or "Fawad did this."
• Use active voice and not passive voice. Use "I did this" and not "This was done by me." Using active voice will engage your reader faster. Passive voice can sometimes be wordier and more challenging to follow.

8. Strategic vs Tactical Achievements

I often ask people this question: What is a key ability required from a senior leader? It is strategic thinking and how to be impactful when not in the room. A junior person who is capable can be impactful when they are in the room, but how do you bring about a change at scale for multiple customers and multiple projects at the same time set apart a junior and a senior person?

If you are looking for senior positions, highlight aspects of your profile that demonstrate that you have been able to act like a force multiplier and that you were able to influence change even when you were not in the room.

An example of tactical achievement could be when a project manager rescues a delayed project and puts it back on track. While the project may be strategic for your customer or company, you were able to bring the change by being personally involved in the project and rolling up your sleeves.

On the other hand, an example of strategic achievement is that you were able to build a project implementation methodology through which the number of on-time projects increased from 10% to 70% over the period of 2 years. In those two years, say the company completed 50 projects, and even though you were not the Project Manager for all 50 projects, you were able to influence those projects by introducing your strategic change in project implementation methodology. This is the kind of force multiplier effect companies seek in senior leaders.

9. Do not add degrees and certifications to your name

Several people add certifications and degrees to their names, e.g., “John Smith, PMP” or “Foo Bar, MBA”. I have always wondered why degrees and certifications become so important that you make them part of your name. Especially for certifications because they are valid for three years only. Next time writing about your profiles, think about who you are and what your identity is. I believe everyone is undoubtedly much more than a degree or a certification. You are not an MBA; you have an MBA degree.

If you think it puts them in front for a LinkedIn search, you can try it out for yourself; I searched for PMP on LinkedIn, and from the first 100 people results, only six were those who had PMP as part of their name. Your results will vary as LinkedIn search is contextualized to your network.?https://lnkd.in/dWhMv5XU

For a search using MBA as the keyword, none of the first hundred search results had MBA as part of their name. https://lnkd.in/d3muePfT

10. Keyword for Bots

It is alright to include different keywords from your industry to ensure that the CV scanning bots pick up your CV, but do not include cliches that do not add value to it.

Summary

I always say to people, "The only person who truly cares about you or is interested in you is you." The person going through hundreds of CVs may not be interested in all your life history. As I mentioned, the CV is a trailer, not a movie. Just like a trailer's purpose is to capture your imagination and invite you to watch the movie, not to tell you the whole plot and give you the climax, you don't have to dump all your life story into the CV. Just make it interesting enough that the person on the other end says, "This looks interesting; I should talk to this person." If that happens, the role of the CV is finished.

Fawad is a Technology Leader with 20 years of experience in the Data and analytics market.