How to write a CV

“If you're applying for a creative position, don't be afraid to get a little creative on your resume.”

~ Rebecca Serle

Lately, some of my friends asked me for help either with organising their CVs or with using LinkedIn in order to change their current job. I'm far from a recruiting expert or an expert on LinkedIn but since I am passionate about this, I read a lot on the subject and also tested a lot of different things. The ones that worked, I recorded them in order to pass them as an example and those that didn't work I saw them as an opportunity to learn. Two of my friends suggested that I should write a blog article in which I should lay out what works and what doesn't out of all the things that I've tried, so that everybody would be able to use what suits them.

So I will start with a series of posts that will highlight the recruiting side of finding a job and also finding one that you will love, so that you can enjoy going to work, doing what you like, doing it with a passion and with a smile on your face.

First up is: organizing your CV. There are two ways in which you get to see someone from HR: by submitting your CV online for a job offering or by being referred by someone already working within the company with an opening. Regardless of the path you chose, your professional history must speak about yourself to the person reading it. If someone reads it and has no idea what you've done in the past (not because of the information inside but because of the way it is laid out), then you can be sure that no one from HR is going to understand it either.

Also, we live in the age of speed and sending someone a 6-7-10 page CV and expecting them to read it, is just wishful thinking. Your CV is not a manuscript that you send off to the publishers and the recruitment people are not newspaper editors, so there's no way they are going to read something like that. Two years ago my professional history was 5 pages long: 10 years into my career and 10 more as an entrepreneurship, education and leadership volunteer; that took up quite some room. When I decided I wanted to change my job, I had days where I reached out to as many as 20 people, sending them mails, my CV or just applying online for a recently vacated position. My response rate was under 20% and out of those, 10% were with "Thank you for applying but..." and the other 10% actually invited me for an interview. I was freaking out so I started doing some research and I came across and article which spoke about CV design. Sure, there are tons of them out there on the web but the one I found was an experiment which allowed lots of people to to get invited for an interview. The first step is: keep your CV nice and tidy. This means a maximum of 2, maybe 3 pages, preferably 2 (damn! mine was 5 pages and I thought it was small, considering all that I've accomplished). But what I've learned in my time working for a PR agency was that you can write big using key words. For example: if in your work experience, you've had to place payments, go to the bank, answer emails and the phone - these are called administrative responsibilities. If you've had to fill out tax forms, submit dossiers based on priority and fill out fiscal records, this is called - keeping records. Does this make sense? It was a bit painful but I've started with the volunteering parts, which I've cut out along with other organizations which had no additional value CV wise, I also cut out tons of descriptions that I wrote for them. 

The professional area...ouch! How can I cut out all of the stuff that I did and I've worked and which I laid out so beautifully...well, very easy: if I didn't have the numbers to back it up or were not relevant to the job I was applying to, I just removed them. 

For example: the fact that I was part of a team that created many commercial spots may have been a great experience for me but it holds no value if my focus is to be a trainer and as such, I am applying for a trainer. The fact that I've had basic accounting and Linux classes also does not help me if I want to apply for a job in communications. Using this perspective, quantity was no longer relevant but quality was. Using this as a template, the rest was easy. 

For a few year now, there are also recruiting programs which automatically sort CVs and/or profiles when you apply online. This has made it much for difficult for someone who is good at what they do but has a sloppy CV, to sit face-to-face with someone from HR. I've learned this after paying a hefty sum to a recruitment and design specialist. True, he did kind of hint at this over the course of my 50 min session but long story short, this was the rezult. 

The second step: after removing all of the non-essential information (this was hard to do but in life, sometimes you need to let go) I've started working on key words. For accounting, these would be: analysis, attention to detail, responsible. For training are: design, implement, facilitate etc. Not sure if I need to write this down but here it goes: the things you write in your CV need to be true. If you write that you've been a design training, you need to know how to do that and how to approach it. Or if you write that you've done portfolio analysis, you'd better know how to actually do that, not just how to write stuff in Excel. 

If you don't know what keywords to use, look on the available jobs posted online and add those to your profile and/or your CV and those will help you pass the screening software and make it to the inbox of someone from HR.

 After I've removed the non-essential stuff, I made sure that I had the key words, description and a ton of details which turned my CV into one of two pages. Changing the design helped me organize the information and made it look new and fresh. I also took out the address, year of birth and the picture (to avoid discrimination that someone can make based on them)  

Please note that using the Europass format is only needed by request or if you want to work in an european institution. The important thing and role for your CV is to make you stand out from the crowd, not make you part of it. The same can be said for CVs saved using job sites such as BestJobs or LinkedIn - it makes you look lazy and disrespectful. 

With my new CV saved on my phone I started to apply online once again. Even when applying on LinkedIn, I uploaded my new CV and not the one used by the site. Out of 60 applications, 48 came back with phone calls, phone interviews and migrations to other available jobs. Seeing as how the response rate was over 50%, the model I created was a success. 

I'll follow up with LinkedIn - how to use it, what can be considered a good profile, how to apply for jobs, how to hold an interview via phone and finally, how to hold one face-to-face. The basis of these will be from late last year too early this year, because there have been changes and it is good to have the most recent information available.