Welcome to the New Bigger Fish - CV, LinkedIn & Interview Tips Monthly Newsletter - Nov 2021
Lee Woodrow
Retired Principal Consultant at Bigger Fish Executive Branding | Expert in Resumes, Hybrid CVs, & LinkedIn Profiles | Empowering Executive Job Seekers with More Interviews & Better Job Offers
I'm pleased to announce that I will be posting monthly newsletters on LinkedIn, including the best job seeker content direct from my website such as LinkedIn Optimisation Tips, Modern CV best practice and interview preparation advice.
So, 2021 has been a record year so far with the amount of my Management and Executive clients landing interviews and job offers from some of the best organisations in the world, including Amazon, Shell, Disney, Oracle, the NHS and UK & US Governments to name a few. All of my clients have used my unique personal branding frameworks and interview techniques to succeed in landing their dream roles.
THE BEST OF THE BIGGER FISH ARTICLES NOV 2021
Do you know how to write an amazing LinkedIn recommendation? I've designed the 4P LinkedIn Recommendation Framework to help you substantiate and deliver value for your colleagues and employees. By including 4 key elements you will easily be able to create recommendations that tick all the boxes.
1. Position: Mention how you know the person, how long, what company and what their professional title is / was.
2. Projects: Drop in a few project names, specifics, locations and key deliverables
3. Performance: How did they do? What value did they deliver, did they overachieve on KPI's?
4. Personality: A few behavioural traits and positive characteristics to finish off your recommendation.
An example:
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing [name] for [length of time], during which [description of your working relationship and positions]. [Name] worked for me on the [describe project] and overachieved on [Describe KPIs or Goals]. Above all, I was impressed with [name]’s ability to [description of what makes person really stand out]. And, of course, his/her [personality trait]. [Name] would be a true asset for any positions requiring [1-2 skills needed for position] and comes with my heartfelt recommendation.
Reading involves higher-level mental processes such as the discovery of rules and order, and the extraction of structured, meaningful information. Knowing this means that high level CV design does not just focus on well written content - it also includes aesthetics and structure to enable the reader to easily identify relevant information.
3 elements are necessary to identify layout / flow and accomplish your goal of landing an interview, particularly with something as focused as a CV.
Eye tracking technology has elucidated the way people look at things — both on the printed page and on the web. This is where eye movement patterns come in!
The F-Pattern
The findings of the Nielsen Norman Group, compiled in various reports, remain perhaps the most cited and the most useful eye tracking resources in the design community. This report describes the now famous F-Pattern.
Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F’s top bar. Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F’s lower bar. Finally, users scan the content’s left side in a vertical movement. This last element forms the F’s stem.
The following heat maps demonstrate the F-pattern
In the absence of anything placed intentionally to grab their attention, the F-Pattern describes the way a person’s eyes will move across a page that is dense with text, making it applicable to CVs. The important thing to note is that the eyes will start in the top left before scanning down the page to search for something interesting or relevant. If you have something you want someone to pay attention to (like a value proposition)—and your page is text-heavy—it’s a good idea to place it towards the top left to ensure it will get the attention it deserves.
The Z-Pattern
Pages that are less informationally dense, tend to elicit eye movement that resembles the letter ‘Z’. This so-called Z-Pattern has many of the same characteristics as the F-Pattern, where simplicity is a priority. This focus on simplicity makes the Z-Pattern uniquely suited to CVs with more white space, where you want one singular focus to draw people in and encourage them to take action. To take advantage of the Z-Pattern, place your important information or call to action along the Z path to make sure your viewer sees it. This will lead to more conversions.
The Bigger Fish CV framework takes into consideration the layout scanning patterns of F and Z and frames information in key areas. At the top we have a clear title and value proposition, which then gets hit by keys skills with the most important first! Then finally the most recent position. By then the reader should of made their mind up whether to read on. Each section in the scanning pattern quickly delivers value.
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Psychometric testing aims to measure attributes, including intelligence, aptitude and personality. Generally psychometric testing is completed online, although some paper questionnaires still remain. Most tests are timed, but some are completed in multiple sittings. The testing provides potential employers with insight into how well candidates work with others, how well they handle stress and whether they will be able to cope with the intellectual demands of the job. Tests fall into two main categories: personality tests, which measure aspects of personality, and aptitude tests, which measure intellectual and reasoning abilities.
PERSONALITY TESTS
The idea behind these tests is that it’s possible to quantify a candidate’s personality by knowing how they felt, thought and behaved in a variety of situations (both at work and outside of work). There are lots of tests, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which places candidates in one of 16 personality groups, and the Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ), which checks that the candidate’s personality fits with the job.
There are no right or wrong answers with personality tests and to encourage reflection, they aren’t typically completed under exam conditions.
APTITUDE TESTS
There are at least 5,000 aptitude and ability tests on the market. Some of them contain only one type of question (for example, questions involving verbal or numerical reasoning) while others are made up of different types. Aptitude tests consist of multiple-choice questions and are administered under exam conditions. They are strictly timed, and a typical test might allow thirty minutes for approximately thirty questions. Accuracy as well as speed of response is usually measured. Intelligence levels are compared to a standard, meaning that candidates must achieve a certain score to pass. Common tests include:
NUMERICAL REASONING
Numerical reasoning tests are designed to test your knowledge on a range of subjects, including: Financial analysis and data interpretation, currency conversion, percentages, ratios, number sequences and more. All these topics directly to how you will cope with the job. However, as we will soon explain, there is a wide range of numerical reasoning tests from various providers, including SHL, Revelian and Talent Q, among others.
Considering that you will be sending out CVs to multiple companies, it is incumbent to ready yourself for a multitude of numerical reasoning test scenarios. From tables and graphs to currency & unit conversion, percentages and more, tests will differ in both their difficulty levels, time frames and even question-answer structure.
VERBAL REASONING
Verbal reasoning tests are a common type of aptitude or psychometric used in job recruitment. They are mainly used to measure your ability to understand, analyse and interpret written information. There are many different assessment companies with a wide assortment of tests for different sectors, position and job levels, but the basic question types remain the same.
SPATIAL REASONING
Spatial reasoning tests, also known as spatial awareness tests, examine orientation skills in two dimensional and three dimensional spaces. Popular spatial reasoning tests include:
DIAGRAMMATIC REASONING
Diagrammatic reasoning tests, often confused with abstract reasoning, inductive reasoning and deductive logical thinking tests, are aptitude tests administered by assessment companies. Unlike non-verbal reasoning tests, diagrammatic reasoning tests display a series of operators and outputs from which a candidate is to infer a set of rules and apply them to new situations.
THIS MONTHS OFFER!
As a thank you for subscribing - for the rest of November Subscribers can receive 10% Off all CV & LinkedIn Optimisation Packages. CLICK HERE FOR OFFER DETAILS
I hope you enjoyed and gained value from the content in this months Newsletter. Please like and subscribe to ensure new job seeker content is delivered to your inbox next month. Follow me for more content on LinkedIn here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/lee-woodrow-executive-cv-writer/
Kind regards,
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CV & LinkedIn Optimisation Specialist
W: www.bigger-fish.co.uk