If your
phone is not ringing in response to the CV you’ve sent in. There are a couple
of questions you should ask yourself before you panic.
Am I
applying for the right role? Don’t get discouraged if you’re applying for
‘wish-list jobs’. The recruiter or organization is looking for the best match
to the role so if you don’t have the demonstrated experience in that field or
particular job you will most likely be rejected, sometime without any feedback.
Focus more on the jobs where you have a solid case to present.
Now, if you
are doing that and still not getting the response you’d like, take a look at
that CV. Does it represent you well? Is it user friendly? Let’s go through the
key things a CV should be.
It primarily should be a marketing tool for
you. By that I mean it is a concise document that creates an interest for the
reader to speak to you. It doesn’t need to include every detail of every job
you’ve ever done. It is more a summary of your roles and career highlights.
Your goal in preparing your CV needs to be to
give enough relevant information about you, your experience and your employment
performance to encourage the employer to call you!
If you
provide too much information it can become difficult to read or even too
complex to digest so it never even gets to be read.
The trick is
to find that balance. The first golden rule for me with CV’s is; make your
CV user friendly. The document is not for you to have a complete
dossier of your entire career. It is to help a potential employer establish if
you have the right background to help their business. The CV needs to be
well laid out with plenty of white space. It needs to flow well both in
sequences of roles, starting with most recent, and with good understandable
points that detail your responsibilities.
Second and
very basically, ensure you have your correct contact details on your CV.
Amazingly, I have received CV’s with no
phone numbers or email details on them. If you do all the work to apply and
present yourself, ensure your contact details are correct.
You also
should provide a variety of methods to contact you in case one form or another
is temporarily unavailable. So ideally provide and land line phone, mobile
phone, email address and home address. This should cover all eventualities and
make sure you have an answering voicemail system to catch any messages if you
can’t answer the phone.
Again, you
are trying to make it easy for the employer to get to know you.
The third
golden rule and possibly the most powerful, list your key achievements.
So to take one step back in your CV you
need a bullet point list of your key responsibilities. These are the ones that
really matter, are relevant and transferable to other jobs. We don’t need
a ‘superman’ long list of responsibilities, as this will potentially make the
employer doubt that you are for real!
So where the
key responsibilities will show the scope of work you have done, your key
achievements will show how well you have done!
This is what the employers want to see. To
maximize the impact of your achievements ensure they are real and that you
accurately reflect the part you played in the achievement. You also need
to include in your achievements data that clearly explains the result or
benefit derived for the company. This demonstrates that you understand the
connection between your role and the purpose of the company. This is a
real attraction for the employer because they will be able to picture how you
might contribute to their business.
These are
the basic building blocks for a CV that will get your phone ringing; it’s now
over to you to respond to their call. I’ll cover some ideas for you in the next
article.
Mark
Bloodworth is a Speaker on Engagement & Retention issues impacting
Australian businesses. He is General Manager of Caden Recruitment, a niche
recruiter based in Melbourne. He can be contacted on 03 9620 9222.