Talent overview including insight, thoughts, tips and hints...

Hello everyone..

Welcome to the weekly Monday newsletter aimed to provide a weekly overview of the industry based on recent conversations with both candidates and hiring managers.

CV or not CV?

Last week I managed to catch up with a few senior candidates, who almost always keep a passive eye on the market. But not many of them had an update to date CV due to lengthy stays in their current roles. 'What does it need to contain these days and how should it look?' I was asked..

So some general CV tips that are applicable no matter the level of role.

NB - the following tips don't guarantee an improvement in your CVs success its just insight into how I see decent CVs presented that go down well with hiring managers.

Your CV and LinkedIn profile should contain the same information although the structure will be slightly different.

So here goes!

From top to bottom..

Often the top bar or section contains full contact information clearly visible and some have it again in footers per page. You need people to quickly see how to contact you. Full name, Phone, email, LinkedIn, other relevant links like GitHub. Don't worry about your full address, location is fine. Ie Knutsford.

Next is your opening statement, a strong paragraph about you as a person. How would you sum yourself up? What is it that you do or best? What roles are you interested in and why? Great adjectives go down well here.. Get creative and remember its designed for the reader. 3rd person indicates someone else wrote it so can depersonalise. For me, this is one of the most important parts!

Next is work history listed in recent order, so your current or last role first.

This is the best order I have seen experience listed.

Title, Company, Sector, Dates

Then in the paragraph and for each role, clearly explain what the role entailed. Show how you made an impact in this role, what does the team look like, any targets or metrics hit. Add any fascinating bits of relevant information to make you stand out. Add numbers if need be ie reduction in cloud spend by X because of what you did.

Then after your experience list the broad tech stack..

Tech - SQL, Python, AWS and Airflow for example. Then you don't have to have a huge box listing all your technical capability. You could put in bold your everyday tech stack if required (indicate that you have) If you used a tool once 10 years ago would you put that in?

Its perfectly fine to have date gaps in your CV. Just add a line explaining.

June 2021 - Dec 2021 - went travelling, or stay at home dad, unwell etc.

I have seen lots of CVs with hobbies, education and other elements added into a neat side bar. This can help for 2 reasons, one its not an after thought. Lots of companies still want to know what degree if any you have and also hobbies / interests give a flavour of the person. Please make sure your hobbies are real, lots of kayakers around these days! And it has been questioned in interview.. awkward if not accurate!

A CV should be as long as you want it to be, however in my experience showing the last 10 years of experience is normally suffice. Further roles / experience can be noted in 1 line. ie Programmer, Barclays, Banking June 2003 - June 2004

Most CVs are formatted by agencies mostly to suit the standard format or custom made format to go onto their clients. Internal may do the same in places. This doesnt mean that you need to forget design etc but make sure content is key!

Pictures, graphics, tables etc are often overlooked because of the reformatting.

Make sure you give the recruiter the ok to edit and send back to you to help with your application.

Hoping this helps with a basic foundation into a CV. If you need any help please do make contact. I'll also ask the wider team to comment as I've undoubtedly missed something and we all have our own ideas.

Thank you for reading this, and as always look out for next Mondays newsletter.

Proactive Partnering over Reactive Recruiting..