Before we start, we want to say – we know. We know this sounds like a “gotcha”, clickbait-y title. Still, we promise that if you follow the tips we outline in this post, you will significantly elevate your chances of securing temporary or permanent work.
When crafting a CV, seemingly little things can make a significant difference. Recruiters, hiring managers and employers look through hundreds, if not thousands, of CVs daily. If your resume isn’t hitting several key points (at the very minimum), it will fall to the bottom of the pile.
1. Cut Out the Waffle!
We can’t stress this enough – don’t pad your CV with unnecessary fluff. Fluffy should apply to golden roast potatoes and your favourite dog breed but not to your personal statement or resume. Why? Because it doesn’t add anything of value. It may look nice, but there’s no substance to it.
Again, it comes back to the volume of CVs that hiring professionals look through daily. They don’t have the time to hunt out the relevant needle in a haystack of irrelevant, additional information. Make their lives easier from the outset by only including what’s genuinely needed, and you’ll already be earning plus points.
Redraft and then Redraft Once More
When you’ve written your personal statement and the rest of your CV, treat it like an author treats their novel – a first draft. Authors don’t finish their beloved manuscript and think, “That’ll do”, then whack it straight to be published. They redraft and redraft and redraft.
Your CV is your foot in your door, your chance to raise eyebrows and get noticed. It’s your first chance to show yourself off and really wow the hiring manager, so treat it with that kind of care and attention! Find the nuggets of gold in terms of skills and experience, and besides that, keep it as lean as possible.
2. What Do You Bring to the Table?
Many candidates fall into the trap of merely describing their role at an earlier job. This shows employers little more than you happened to know what your role’s responsibilities were. Mention the aspects that will be relevant to the job you’re applying to, and then, importantly, talk about how your skills in that role helped the employer.
Employers are looking at your experience, yes, but they’ll be seeing a lot of CVs with similar levels of experience to you as a candidate. How did you handle those experiences in a way that elevated you from other candidates?
Did you achieve any commendations, awards or particularly successful results during your time in the role? Did you show that you could learn new skills quickly? What statistics can you put down on the page? Did you improve something by X amount or by Y percentage? Then say so!
There’s almost always an angle you can take with your job experience that’s better than just describing the experience in and of itself.
What’s Your USP?
Linked to this, in business speak, what’s your Unique Selling Point (USP)? Do you have a trump card you can play that will wow the employer? You may have completed a particular training that only 1% of professionals have completed.
Or perhaps you’ve been trained in a brand, spanking new technology that few others have? Whatever it is, make a thing of it! Don’t consign it to a lonely bullet point way down your CV; give it the attention it deserves. If it’s a big deal, then make it a big deal.
3. Take a Bit of Time to Format Your CV Properly
Now, we’re not saying your CV needs to be a Louvre-quality masterpiece on the eyes. But it can look nicer than a basic word-processed document with all the flair and panache of a particularly damp and drizzly November morning.
And, what’s more, there are so many free tools at your disposal these days that can make formatting a slick-looking CV incredibly easy. Software like Canva, for example, has a whole bunch of free templates into which you can insert your CV.
It will take you only a short time, and so long as it’s not visually striking to the point of being distracting, you’re creating something that stands out a little bit more than most CVs are going to.
Again, we’ll reiterate that you don’t want it to be all style and no substance, but a few splashes of design can genuinely make a difference. Alternatives to Canva include Hloom, Novoresume, Kickresume and Wepik.
4. Stay Up to Date
Sometimes, you can’t get around the fact that you don’t have enough recent experience for a role. However, there are occasions where, if you can prove you’ve stayed up to date (through training, research, CPD, etc.) with the role’s requirements, you might still be considered.
Obviously, you want to lay out your job history fully, but if your most recent work isn’t particularly relevant to the role in question, then there’s just as much benefit to displaying how you’ve kept up to date with the role’s requirements.
This way, you not only show that you have relevant, recent experience – even if it isn’t via your employment – but you also show an aptitude for self-directed learning and taking the initiative, traits employers are always eager to see in candidates.
Not a Guarantee
Of course, this won’t always guarantee you a look-in, especially if you’re up against candidates with that recent, relevant experience. However, if there aren’t many of those around, you’ve given yourself a much better chance when compared with other candidates.
5. Avoid CV Own Goals
Permit us, if you will, a sporting analogy. In sports, you can’t account for the quality of the opposition; sometimes, they’re too good. They’re the mercurial talent that can make that one-in-a-million backhand down the line or score that screamer from halfway in the 90th minute.
However, you can ensure that you get your routines, drills and techniques correct.
The job-hunting process can be thought of in the same way. There might be a candidate out there who’s more qualified than you, who’s better than everyone, in fact – that’s perfect for the job. You can’t do anything about that. But what you can do is ensure your CV is as good as it can be, and that includes getting the basics right.
If your resume is riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, then you’ve done the equivalent of scoring an own goal. You’d be amazed at how many CVs land in hiring managers’ inboxes littered with slip-ups and shoddy spelling.
Now, we understand that spelling and grammar aren’t everybody’s forte, but with free tools like Grammarly, there’s no excuse for lax grammar.
A Quick Recap
So, there you have it – five ways to genuinely improve your CV and make it stand out. Let’s quickly recap:
- Keep it lean.
- Demonstrate, don’t describe.
- Make it look nice.
- Keep up to date however you can.
- Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
If you’re looking for work, then we’re here to help. Get in touch today! We’d love to hear from you.
