Once you have worked out your key selling points you know what you want to say to the recruiter. However, in order to sell yourself effectively you need to plan how you are going to present this information.

Your CV is your personal marketing document – an advertisement for yourself. Advertisers make sure that they catch the eye of the reader, they use evocative language, and they make sure that the reader understands the benefits of buying the product. Taking the same approach with your CV will maximise the impact that it has on the reader. This is particularly important for senior CVs. You are not just showing the recruiter that you have a certain set of skills and experiences, but persuading them that you can make a real and positive impact on the organisation that you join.

This does not mean, of course, that your CV should exaggerate your ability or mislead the recruiter in any way. Your aim should be to help the recruiter by making sure that they fully understand what you genuinely have to offer their organisation. You can do this by:

• concentrating on the points that will be important to the recruiter
• presenting your skills, experience and achievements in a way that does them full justice.

GETTING YOUR MESSAGE OVER

Your first aim is to make sure that your CV gets read. Recruiters are busy people. They will usually give each CV a quick scan, pick the best for a more thorough reading, and pick only the very best of those to invite for an interview. Speculative CVs may receive only a cursory glance, especially if they have arrived out of the blue without a preliminary contact being made first (see Chapter 1). It is therefore vital for your CV to make it absolutely clear to the most perfunctory reader what you can offer them.

This means that your CV should be short. Keeping your CV short means that your key selling points really stand out, instead of being buried in a mass of less interesting facts. A good rule of thumb is:

• one A4 page for speculative CVs
• two pages for most applications
• three pages for applications for very senior jobs.

Question and answer session

‘I have thirty years ‘experience! How on earth am I going to put this on to one or two pages?’

By concentrating on your current key selling points rather than documenting the entire 30 years. The aim of a CV is to get an interview, and you only need include information that is going to help you get that interview. Once you are talking to the employer, you will have the opportunity to fill in any missing details.

‘So what can I leave out of a CV?’

The following information can usually be left out of a CV:

• marital status
• numbers and ages of children
• details of jobs held more than fifteen years ago
• minute details of more recent jobs
• details of your junior schools
• irrelevant, obsolete or lower-level qualifications, e.g. GCSEs if you have a PhD
• failed examinations
• reasons for leaving jobs
• salary details
• hobbies and interests (unless directly relevant)
• place of birth
• nationality
• age
• details of your referees
• names of relatives already working for the organisation. This looks unprofessional on a senior CV.

‘But I thought that recruiters didn’t like to see unexplained gaps in CVs. What do I do about giving information on jobs I held twenty or thirty years ago?’

Employers don‘t like it if you leave months or years in your career unaccounted for. It might mean that you were in prison! Give brief details of your early jobs; for example, 1970-1975 Developing experience as a journalist on a number of local papers.

MAKING A POWERFUL FIRST IMPRESSION

First impressions count. If your CV starts with a powerful selling point that catches the recruiter‘s eye, they are likely to read further to find out all about you. If you start off with irrelevant information or something that could be construed as a weakness, the recruiter may not take the time to read your CV and find out what you have to offer. Even if they do read it, a negative first impression colours the way that a recruiter sees the rest of your CV.

For most people the first and main Section of their CV should therefore deal with their employment history, as this is the crucial area that shows whether they can do the job on offer. At a senior level, the exception to this would be CVs for jobs where qualifications are of paramount importance; for example, academics and research scientists.

Putting first things first

As you prepare each Section of your CV, keep in mind the principle that first impressions count. Put details of your most impressive or relevant achievements at the top of each Section. For example, you should usually put details of your current or last job at the top of your Career and Achievements Section and then work through previous posts in reverse chronological order. In the information on your current job your most eye-catching achievement should come first – and so on.

Ending on a high note

End your CV on a high note so that you leave the reader with a final positive image of you as they put the CV down. A Section on your interesting hobbies or the languages that you speak can be a good way of ending a CV.

Case study – Brian reorders his CV

Brian is amused to find a CV that he prepared for himself a number of years ago. The first page is shown in Figure 2.

While most of the information on it is still accurate, he winces to think of the first impression that it would give if he used it today:

• I haven’t got any paper qualifications.
• I can offer clerical experience.
• I’ve got two daughters who could well be in the middle of important exams making relocation a problem.

Brian has excellent skills and experience as a human resources manager, but a recruiter might not turn to the Second page of his CV to find out what he has to offer their organisation. Compare this to the CV that Brian has put together today (see Figure 3).

Right from the start, this CV gives the recruiter all the reasons why he should see Brian for an interview. The first page concentrates on:

• How the recruiter can contact Brian.
• Brian’s most recent and relevant career achievements. In this CV, he has not wasted space on his early years in clerical jobs. Brian has given detailed information about the last fifteen years of his career, and has briefly summarised his earlier experience.
• The skills and experience Brian has to offer.

PRESENTING YOUR EXPERIENCE FOR MAXIMUM IMPACT

Advertisers take a lot of care in preparing the description of their product. You should do the same when describing yourself in your CV. Make sure that you do yourself justice in the way that you describe yourself in your CV:

• back up the claims that you make
• quantify your achievements
• show that you can deliver what is most important in your job
• use positive and powerful language
• avoid meaningless ‘pufF and padding
• avoid ambiguous language
• avoid jargon
• be professional.

Backing up your claims

Which of these examples has more credibility?

‘I am an excellent leader and build high performance teams’

or

‘On taking up the post of European sales manager, I set up a team of ten salespeople based in three EU countries. By focusing on communication, motivation and goal setting, we exceeded demanding sales targets in each of the four years that I held this post.‘

It is not enough to say that you have a particular skill or quality for example, that you are an excellent communicator or an expert on taxation. Help the recruiter to understand fully what you have to offer them by providing evidence. For example:

• give examples of what you have achieved in the past
• show where you have overcome difficult challenges in making these achievements
• quantify your achievements where possible
• tell the reader how your organisation benefited.

Your aim is to prove to the recruiter through your past achievements that you have what it takes to succeed within their organisation.

Quantifying achievements

Quantifying your achievements gives a more meaningful picture of the size of your role and what you achieved within it. For example:

• Staff Nurse Grade D on the Acute Female Surgical Ward (30 beds).
• Managing the accounts of 50 customers.

Where possible, you should quantify any improvements that you have made, for example:

• Saved the department (£)30,00 over 12 months.
• Increased first-time test passes by 10%.

Think about the best way to quantify your achievements. Perhaps you only dealt with two clients at a time, but over your ten years with the firm you successfully handled projects for over 10 clients, and had numerous repeat orders from satisfied customers. Putting the information that way gives a much clearer picture of what you achieved.

Showing that you can deliver what is most important in your job

For many jobs, numbers can only ever give part of the picture.
How do you show that you are, for example, a caring social worker, a talented designer or an inspiring teacher? You may be able to show an increase in exam passes or your involvement in extra-curricular activities as evidence, but much of your ability will be conveyed in the way in which you talk about your job. This should show that you understand which elements of your work are important and that you take pride in doing these well.

Case study – Steve shows he knows what is important to his clients

In describing his past achievements, Steve can use some impressive
statistics. For example, he has:

• implemented projects with a value of up to £1 million
• redeveloped a customer information database holding 20,00 customer records
• implemented a payroll system covering 5,00 staff.

Steve knows that this doesn‘t tell the whole story. When he writes his CV, he includes the following points:

• the projects were completed to clients‘time, budget and quality standards
• the projects met his clients’ ultimate goals for example, reducing customer complaints or increasing the speed of data access
• ongoing support was provided where needed.

By doing this, Steve is showing that he knows how important these points are to clients, and that he makes sure that he delivers in these areas.

Using positive and powerful language

Your CV should use clear and positive language. The following may provide inspiration for describing your achievements:

Ability	Eliminating	Persuading
Accurate	Enabling	Planning
Achieving	Enforcing	Preparing
Adapting	Ensuring	Preventing
Administering	Establishing	Professional
Advising	Evaluating	Profit
Analysing	Exceeding	Promoted
Appraising	Experienced	Promoting
Appropriate	Flexibility	Providing
Approving	Forecasting	Proving
Arranging	Forming	Publishing
Assessing	Founding	Purchasing
Auditing	Gaining	Qualified
Averting	Generating	Quality
Avoiding	Goals	Quantifying
Awareness	Guiding	Raising
Building	Heading	Recruiting
Centralising	Impact	Redesigning
Challenging	Implementing	Reducing
Clients	Improving	Reorganising
Coaching	Increasing	Representing
Communicating	Independently	Researching
Completing	Influencing	Resolving
Conducting	Initiating	Results
Consolidating	Initiative	Reviewing
Constructing	Interpreting	Revising
Constructive	Introducing	Saving
Convincing	Investigating	Scheduling
Co-ordinating	Judgement	Securing
Cost savings	Launching	Selling
Creating	Leading	Significant
Customers	Liaising	Solving
Deadlines	Maintaining	Standardising
Decentralising	Managing	Strategic
Deciding	Marketing	Streamlining
Delegating	Mediating	Successful
Delivering	Modelling	Supporting
Demonstrating	Modernising	Teambuilding
Designing	Monitoring	Team working
Developing	Motivating	Testing
Diagnosing	Negotiating	Training
Directing	Objectives	Upgrading
Displaying	Operating	Validating
Documenting	Organising	Versatile

Avoiding ‘puff’

Don’t fill your CV with meaningless puff and the latest business buzzwords. Claims such as ‘Dynamic high-achiever with track record of success in business process re-engineering’ sound false and give little real information to the recruiter.

Use these words with caution when describing yourself:

• Achiever, dynamic and inspiring sound pretentious.
• Excellent and successful can be overused – count up the number of times they appear in your CV.
• It goes without saying that senior people should be reliable, hardworking, honest and conscientious.
• The language that you use should support your professional image. Words like friendly or helpful are too soft and are best avoided by senior people.

Avoiding padding

My duties included managing the Chiswick branch... During this time, I was responsible for family law cases...

Phrases like ‘duties included’ and ‘during this time’ add nothing to the information that follows. Use bullet points and start each bullet point with a strong verb. This style avoids the constant repetition of the words T and ‘my’. For example:

Achievements

• Managing the Chiswick Branch...
• Responsible for family law cases...

Avoiding ambiguity

I worked as one of a small team of managers...
I supported the change process...
I participated in the polymers research project...
I assisted with financial planning for the company...

These phrases leave the recruiter none the wiser as to what you were actually doing. Maybe you assisted with the financial planning by making the tea and doing the typing for a team of accountants! Make sure that you say what you actually did. For example:

Analysing past financial performance to identify areas for future improvement, preparing budgets and creating financial models to ensure sound financial planning.

You may want to tailor the language and style of your CV to the culture of the organisation that you send it to. A new and dynamic company might be impressed if you described your current firm as aggressively competitive – a health service trust would probably conclude that you would not fit in with them.

Avoiding jargon

Most CVs need to include some ‘technical’ terms and abbreviations (for example, Brian‘s CV shown in Figure 3 talks about NVQs). However, you need to make sure that the recruiter can understand you. Remember that your CV may be screened by a human resources manager who is less familiar with technical terminology than a line manager would be. Avoid using jargon or acronyms unless you are certain they will be understood.

Being professional

Recruiters will not take you seriously unless your CV is businesslike and professional. Don‘t introduce jokes – few recruiters appreciate humour in a CV – and don’t use gimmicks. Gimmicky CVs are occasionally successful for new graduates: at a senior level they send your application straight into the reject pile.

CREATING AN HONEST CV

Your CV should be made up of positive information about yourself. You will naturally present your achievements in the best possible light. There will also be information that does not help your case, which you want to leave out. You can usually omit details of failed exams, unsuccessful projects, jobs that lasted just a few weeks, and so on.

There is clearly a difference between putting yourself in a positive light and misleading the recruiter. Don’t be economical with the truth on your CV:

• you may get caught out – many recruiters routinely check applicants’ backgrounds
• if you talk yourself into a job that you can‘t do, you won’t last long.

The background checking process

Employers are all too aware that some applicants falsify details of their experience, qualifications, reasons for leaving jobs and past salaries. In response, they are checking candidates’ backgrounds more thoroughly than ever before.

Checks include:

• taking up multiple references
• asking new starters to provide original copies of their qualification certificates
• checking with colleges and universities that the certificates provided are genuine
• using specialist agencies to conduct pre-employment checks on candidates’ education and past employment records.

Companies will not employ candidates who they discover have lied on their CV.

Pre-employment checks are particularly common in the teaching and caring professions, and in the defence and financial Sectors. Their use is spreading to other industries and senior staff are among the first to be checked. Avoid the temptation to embellish your CV.

Question and answer session

‘I was sacked from my last job after a disagreement with my boss. If I tell the truth on my CV how am I going to get another job?‘

You don’t need to put the reason why you left the job on your CV. You might also choose to use a skills-based CV format(see Chapter 4) to draw attention to your work experience and away from the fact that you left your last job without having another one to go to. However, interviewers are going to pick up on the fact that this happened and ask why. Prepare how you will answer questions in the most positive way possible and negotiate with your ex-employer over the reference that they are going to give you to ensure that they are not going to contradict what you say at interview. Many companies now only give standard references which state your last job title and the dates you were working at the organisation, and as a matter of policy do not divulge any further information.

‘I have been promoted to a new role and am finding the demands too great. I want to apply for a job at a lower level but am concerned about what recruiters are going to think about this. Can I make my current job appear more junior than it is?’

Employers look for recruits who will find their job an exciting new challenge and are wary of taking on someone who appears to be overqualified. Giving the reason why you want to move down a gear – for example, that you want to spend more time with your children or found the responsibilities of your previous job too heavy may also count against you. You do not have to emphasise how senior your current role is, as long as you do not mislead the recruiter. Take a positive stance as well think through all the reasons why you want the new role and sell these to the employer in your covering letter and interview.

‘I know that I can do this job, but I’m worried that the company will think that I‘m too young. Can I hide my age?’

Your CV should stress the depth and breadth of your experience and your maturity of judgement and outlook. The fact that you have developed these qualities at a younger age than most should be a point in your favour. However, you don‘t need to put your date of birth in your CV (although the recruiter may wonder why you‘ve omitted it) and you certainly don‘t need to state your age. Never state that you are a strong candidate despite your youth as this merely serves to draw attention to your age and might start to raise doubts in the employer’s mind.

COMPLETING APPLICATION FORMS

If a company requires you to complete an application form, don’t send a CV instead it is unlikely that they will consider you further.

However, if you have already put together a CV, you have made the best possible preparation for completing an application form -you have identified your strengths and thought through how best to present them.

Getting your selling points on the form

The application form dictates the information that you must give but you still need to think through how to present this information for maximum impact.

Go through your list of ‘selling points’. Decide how each of these can be included on the form and how the information in each Section can be presented to your best advantage. Most forms have an ‘Any Other Information’ Section, which can be a useful opportunity to include information on any of your strong points that are not naturally covered elsewhere.

• Be careful to follow any instructions given on the form – I know of one organisation that asked candidates to fill in their application form manually using black ink and automatically rejected anyone who used blue.
• Try to avoid cramming so much information into the space given that it becomes difficult for the reader to pick out the important points. If you really need more space, you can add an extra page or two, but it is best to avoid doing this as a reader scanning a pile of forms to select those of most interest may fail to read those pages.

MAKING THE MOST OF EMAIL

You will probably be sending out most of your CVs by email and the vast majority of medium and large companies have a sophisticated electronic system for handling your application. CVs are received by email, usually into a central account, passed by email to recruiting managers, and stored on a database which can be searched for relevant CVs when vacancies arise.

There is a number of ways in which you can work with the recruiter‘s IT systems in order to ensure that your CV gets noticed.

Sending your CV to the right place

Advertisements will always state how they would like CVs to be submitted. Where you are given a choice of email, post or fax you will usually find that email is not only the most convenient route for you, but also the recruiter’s preferred method as well. Emailed CVs can usually be fed directly into the company’s systems which prevents them from being lost or from failing to reach the right manager. Agencies and head-hunters have a strong preference for emailed CVs or online applications as this is the easiest form for them to use when distributing your information to recruiting companies.

Where you are sending a speculative CV, you will need to do some research into where your CV should be sent to. Most organisations have a set way in which they would like CVs submitted. In smaller organisations, it is often most appropriate to send your CV directly to the line manager concerned. In this situation a paper CV is more likely to catch the manager‘s attention (emails are easily deleted without being properly read) although you may wish to send an electronic version as backup, with your email referring to the fact you have already sent a paper copy.

Most sizeable organisations have a preferred route for speculative CVs to be submitted. They may wish candidates to apply online via their webpage, or they may ask for emails to be sent to a central address. This assists with the company’s automated handling of applications. Find out from the organisation’s webpage or HR department who your CV should be sent to. As the HR department will usually filter CVs before passing them on to line managers, you may also wish to send your CV to the head of the department which you wish to work for, with a note to say that you have also applied to the company via their preferred route.

Making sure your CV is readable

By the time your CV has been automatically processed by the recruiter, it may look very different from the document you saw on your screen.

• Always attach your CV as an electronic document – don‘t send a scanned copy. Scanned documents are harder to read and databases often have difficulty in recording the information.
• Don’t simply cut and paste your CV into the body of your email as the formatting will be lost. While the formatting is often lost in the course of your CV being processed, you should give your CV the opportunity to be seen in its most professional form.
• Don’t password protect your attachment.

• Follow any instructions given in an advertisement for quoting reference numbers in your email; these are often used to automatically sort applications.
• If you are applying for a specific post, put the title in the header of the CV.
• Keep the formatting in your CV simple. Spacing is often altered dramatically when a CV is entered onto an organisation‘s database and features such as bold and underline are lost. Make sure that your CV will be understandable even after the recruiter has processed it.
• Don’t attach a covering letter as a separate document as it is likely to become detached from the CV itself in the course of processing. Include introductory information in the body of the email and remember that this too may get detached from the CV.

Catching the attention of search engines

Many large companies keep electronic copies of the CVs that they receive on a central database. When a vacancy arises, the CVs on the database are searched to see if they contain relevant keywords.Make sure your CV contains the words or phrases which a recruiter is likely to search for. The most likely examples of these
are:

• Generally recognised job titles, such as Solicitor, Mechanical Engineer or PR Manager. If your company has given your role an unusual title, you may wish to change it on your CV, although you will need to make it clear to the recruiter that you have done this before they take up a reference from your employer.

• Generally recognised key skills and qualifications, e.g. ‘Offshore Survival Certificate’ or ‘project management’.
• The names of computer languages, software packages and operating systems.
• Words which highlight the technology and experience relevant to roles in your profession or Sector, for example ‘polyethylene’, ‘Saudi Arabia’ and ‘Prince IF.

CHECKLIST

• Is your CV an appropriate length?
• Have you eliminated all irrelevant information?
• Is the most relevant information at the top of your CV?
• Have you provided supporting evidence for all the claims you have made?
• Have you sold your achievements using positive language?
• Would your CV stand up to a rigorous pre-employment check?

POINTS TO CONSIDER

• 1.Which of your achievements would make the most powerful first impression on a recruiter?
• 2.Pick three words or phrases which most accurately convey the professional image that you want to convey to the recruiter (for example, meticulous, accurate, analytical; or creative, strategic thinker, business acumen). Have you included these in your CV?
• 3.Would your search for work be helped if you prepared a version of your CV for the internet?