August 18th, 2007 Posted in Business

CV advice from those that know…

I recently changed from a traditional CV to a skills based one after speaking to the uni careers service, where I listed key skills and evidenced them from jobs and uni. I got a phone call from a recruitment agency yesterday from a lovely lady called Ann, who set me straight on how recruitment actually works. It’s quite simple.

Nobody reads your CV.

They skim it, the employer skims it, and most of the hard work is done by database searches. Ann explained that all your jobs need to have a bullet point list of key skills, containing all the key words that people might search for. Make your “profile” section hard hitting and straight to the point. Say what you want to do, and what kind of company you want to work for. It’s not about fitting in to some mythical corporate fantasy. The match needs to go both ways.

I have never got a phone call from an agency with my traditional or skills based CV. I submitted a new CV after speaking to Ann, and got phone calls from three agencies within the same day 🙂