Meet me on a LinkedIn Live

"Taking CVs from Good to Great"

I’m doing a LinkedIn Live with Simon Ward on Wednesday, an excellent career coach whose advice is always worth considering.

Here’s today’s intro post on LinkedIn. Join us!

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There's a lot of advice on what a great CV should be. Much of it contradictory - such is the subjective nature of recruitment.

But what's the point of a CV? Think about why, how and by whom, CVs are administered and assessed, and work back from there.

Who?

Your CV is reviewed multiple times by different stakeholders - typically the higher up they are, the later they view it in process, each with the power to say No.

The 'lower' down they are the higher the volume of CVs, while at the top, yours might be the only CV being read.

Your CV should show Expertise, Experience, Authorativeness, and Trustworthiness to each reader (much like Google ranks websites).

What's good for one, might not be good for another (frustrating but true).

Why?

At the start of a process, if dealing with a high volume of CVs it's common for a hiring process to find reasons to reduce the number to review.

It's fortunate that often around 95% of applications are wholly unsuitable - even then there might be 30 - 50 good enough applications.

From there applications are further filtered down, eventually through interviews.

A CEO might be involved at a final stage, with yours the only CV read. Her requirements might be very different to an administrator with 400 CVs.

Ultimately, the 'why' in a real vacancy, is to find people who can solve the problem a vacancy presents, will fit in / complement the team, and will stick around long enough to show a return on investment.

Often with bias.

How?

CVs are put into yes, no and maybe piles. Maybes are those who aren't immediate no's but not yes enough to get past CV review stage. This is often done through an ATS to administer (not reject at scale) applications.

Maybe is the worst place to be. Given if there isn't time to speak to all the maybes, they may be in this limbo until the end of the process.

Your CV should make it easy to decide on a yes or a no, by being readable, consistently structured with no typos (use Grammarly or similar), concise with the most relevant information at the top of the first page (in case they never read past it), and showing relevant skills, qualifications, achievements (with numbers and context).

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I'd argue you need to get your CV to objectively good, rather than subjectively perfect (the path of madness in a long job search).

Indeed the best place to be is 'good enough'.

Which is a bit ironic considering you can see me talking about this with Simon Ward on Wednesday in our LinkedIn Live "Taking your CV from Good to Great".

Join us by clicking on this link:

https://www.linkedin.com/events/takingyourcvfromgoodtogreat7282738961725194240/theater/

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Hope to see you there?

Greg