Developing a CV can be a nail-biting experience. There are so many different aspects to a great CV – content, wording, style, format, design – but most importantly, strategy. That might not be what you expected me to say.
Most job seekers do not consider the audience and instead compose the CV to please themselves. This is a mistake. A CV should always be written for the reader – the hiring manager, the recruiter, etc. When we work with our clients, of course we want them to be happy with their new CV, but moreover, we want to impress the person beyond the client – the gatekeeper and decision-maker – so that our client lands the interview.
Most job seekers are emotionally connected to information in their past, making it difficult for them to discern what should be included and excluded, from their executive CV.
When architecting a CV, it is critical to write the document for the reader. Readers come in various forms and differ throughout the stages of the job search. The first reader is often an assistant doing CV searches. The second reader may be a recruiter, an interviewer or management-level human resource professional. These individuals are the ones making the decision to contact you for an interview. The actual hiring decision will be made by someone else or a group of other people; however, if your CV does not impress the first level of reviewers, you will never meet the people who would hire you.
Here are some things to consider when writing an executive CV for the reader:
Emotionally detach yourself
This is very difficult to do for most people because you are too close to the material to be able to judge effectively what IS important and what is NOT important to the reader. If you find yourself just throwing information into the CV in hopes that “something” will catch the attention of the reader, you might need to step back and force yourself to be more objective. A project requiring 6 weeks of your attention may cause you to want to go into detail on your CV, but a line or two is enough. More details can be brought up on the interview.
Do not underestimate the reader
If you have a large date gap or other potential “red flag” it is much better to handle it head-on than to try to cover it up. Watch the over-the-top flowery wording, too. Action words are great, but keep in mind that “professional but conservative” is always a safe bet for the executive level CV.
The reader may not be human
In most cases these days, the first hurdle the CV must leap is the computer database search engine. Recruiters use both external and internal database search technology to look for CVs that meet their criteria – ‘datamining.’ These search engines are given specific keywords for which to search and they crawl the CVs in the database seeking those keywords. Once the database takes a bite of the CV, next up is passing the human test. It is never a bad thing to submit both a scannable version and a human-friendly version.
It all boils down to knowing the market, knowing what the reader wants to see or needs to see, and being able to create a CV strategy that meets those needs. The purpose of the CV is to get job interviews. A CV will not win a job – only you can do that through a complete, effective presentation throughout the entire process from CV to interview to follow up. The CV can eliminate you as a candidate, though, so it is critical for it to be top-notch from the very start.
About the Author:
Alesia Benedict is an industry leader and CEO of GetInterviewsCV.co.uk, a CV writing firm that aids senior and C-level executives through their job search. Their services even come with a guarantee — interviews in 30 days or they’ll rewrite for free!
