Number of View: 2325

Whilst social media is currently transforming the way jobseekers search and apply for jobs, the humble CV retains its status at the pinnacle of candidate selection.

 

But there are steps you can take to ensure your promo material is on the money:

 

Make the postman redundant

Relatively speaking enveloping your paper CV, firming down a licked stamp and trudging to the post box for despatch is the modern-day equivalent of sending a parchment strapped to a carrier pigeon: time-consuming and potentially unreliable.  Nobody coos over A4 scroll these days – think electric.  And before you think that regression is fashionable, Tweed and skinny jeans were welcomed by trendy youngsters.  Recruiters have grown up.  CVs you have to open with anything more than a click of a mouse are just plain irritating.

Who the hell are you?

Any recruiter will tell you that the single most frustrating element to any CV is a lack of personal introduction.  They aren’t looking for a biographical encyclopaedia of every nook and cranny of your life, but a synopsis of your background and what relevant skills you have for the job you are applying for are essential.  Some applications are accompanied by a cover letter and this is to be encouraged but with or without one of these, your profile needs to be the first thing on your CV and it needs to be impacting!

Avoid arbitrary obvious observations like “able to work individually and as part of a team” or “hardworking” because a) these are expected traits from anyone over the age of 14; and b) statements like these are reserved for the unimaginative.  And a lack of imagination is not a positive sign for a marketer.

Be concise about why your reader has your CV.  If you’re applying for marketing jobs in general that’s great, but why are you applying for that marketing job in particular?

Clever clogs or college drop-out?

Conjecture surrounds where on your CV to place your academic achievements.  First off, let’s cover the fact that you must make them visible.  How visible may depend on what you have to shout about.  Taking as read that you would only apply for a job for which you meet the minimum educational criteria (don’t bother if you don’t because in the current climate you’ll be competing with folk who have!) you need to decide whether to promote your awards directly after your profile or right at the end of your CV.

There is a very simple formula for this:

Any achievements comparably better than A-level equivalent should be detailed on the front page.  So this includes university education, advanced national vocational courses (NVQs), industry-recognised qualifications (CIM, CIPR etc).  If you bailed education early you’ve no need to shout about it.  Put your education at the bottom of your CV.

A point to note: relevant training courses/personal development programmes are worth mentioning.  Don’t waste time and space detailing the courses, instead provide the reader with a link back to the course content, which will presumably be detailed somewhere on the Web.

Exemplify your experience but do not exaggerate it

Quite why jobseekers fail to accentuate their valuable day-to-day skills and experience is a mystery that will perhaps never be solved.  It is a professional crime for a digital marketing professional not to mention that they undertake search engine optimisation (SEO) duties, for example.  Yes, it may be taken for granted that this is the case but when you’re compiling a summary of your job brief you can never take anything for granted, especially in an age where recruiters often search for potentially relevant candidates via sophisticated databases.  If you’ve done it, mention it.  Don’t bang on about it but do give an example of how you implemented a particular strategy, because…

…by merely mentioning the skill you are not showing any level of expertise with it.  And just because you are aware of a sough-after piece of experience is no evidence of your participation in it.  Over-cooking the egg will result in the yolk being on you when you fail in the interview to live up to the hype.  Keep it real but keep it enticing.

Engaging the audience

With applications to jobs at an all-time high not only do you need to reach the recruiter you need them to want you.  Your CV can contain all the skills and experience in the world but this will count for nothing if you lose the reader’s interest with a flat ‘pitch’.  Of course, you’re not trying convince Andrew Lloyd Webber to turn your past into a stage production but your story and its subsequent offering must be compelling.  Try writing with a quick-step vibe, which naturally gets to the point without rendering it monosyllabic.  One/two-lined bullet-pointed highlights work best.

Whatever you do, avoid the first person ramble of a singular paragraph exclaiming that ‘first I did this, then I did that, then I did the other’.  Boring.

Mentioning the train-spotting

So outside of work you like nothing better to do than don a trench-coat, comb your hair back, pull on some glasses and trot to the nearest railway station with flask and jotter-pad in hand.  Fair enough.  Just don’t mention it on your CV.  Why?  Because aside from it appearing peculiar, nobody actually cares. 

In fact, unless your hobbies and interests are relevant to the job/company to which you are applying, the inclination would be to avoid mentioning your extra-curricular activities at all.  There is a simple reason for this: suppose your hobby was going to watch Spurs play football on a Saturday.  That’s fine.  And this would be an excellent ice-breaker if your reader was also a Spurs fan.  What, though, if your reader was an Arsenal fan?  It could – you never know – have the opposite effect.

However, if you are applying for a role within a not-for-profit organisation and you enjoy dancing to the tune of the old folk at the local hospice on a Sunday afternoon, this act of benevolence may well be seen as a fantastic show of empathy. 

 

“Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes,” once wrote American Poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

 

You might also be interested in How to Write the Perfect Cover Letter and Developing a Professional Profile for Your CV

 

Simon Lewis | Editor | Only Marketing Jobs

Related posts:

1. How to get yourself noticed
2. How to get yourself noticed in a crowded market
3. How to write the perfect cover letter
4. How to find a job using your marketing degree
5. How marketing jobseekers can stand out from the crowd
6. 5 top tips to getting a marketing job
7. Getting a marketing job in the charity sector
8. 11 creative ways to find a marketing job
9. How to network on LinkedIn
10. How long should your CV be?