THE POWER OF YOUR RESUME/CV.

Introduction & purpose-

Personal Best Worldwide is a recruitment company, bringing companies across the globe their perfect hires. We also bring great candidates together with amazing employers to help job seekers find their dream jobs. Today, I wanted to talk about the power of your resume when applying for roles, either online or in-person.

Why your resume/CV is important-

Your resume is a powerful piece of paper which lists your working life, achievements and is designed to help you stand out from the crowd when applying for jobs. It is effectively your corporate life story on a few sheets of paper, usually bunched up with many other sheets of paper from many other people.

In order to stand a chance of being noticed, the power of your resume/CV has be pretty good. On average recruiters spend between 5-10 seconds scanning a resume before adding it to a shortlist for further review, or hitting the red x and sending you to the never-never pile.

So in a pile of 100’s of resumes, how do you make your resume powerful? Today I am going to be sharing (what I believe) to be some useful tips and tricks to get you that initial interview.

Do’s & Don’ts-

• DO use an online template for creating your CV/resume (try to find one that is ATS friendly)
• DO choose a template that suits your personality & the type of role you are applying for (flowers and colours are great for marketing people, or creative design applicants, but not for financial consultants or project managers)
• DO list your work history in chronological order (newest first) to make it easy to see what your CURRENTLY do
• DO make your contact details and overall resume easy to read with a good size font & highlight important parts in BOLD
• DO try to keep your resume/CV a maximum of 3 pages – the 1 page rule does not apply, if you have been working for 15 years and have had 3 jobs with great achievements, then it is almost impossible to keep it to 1 page.
• DO ensure your direct email address, phone number and general location are easily noticeable (do not put your full address on your resume, you never know who may get hold of it)
• DO list all of your employment history, focusing on achievements and goals rather than “what you did” (we will go into examples later on)
• DON’T choose a loud resume unless it fits with the type of role you do
• DON’T include any work experience on your resume that lasted less than 1 year (unless its an internship or contract -be sure to make that clear on the resume)
• DONT write about what you did, write about what you achieved and learned.
• DON’T include your full address on your resume, or date of birth, or the year you graduated from college/school/university.
• DON’T use a very small font, or group lots of text together, readability is crucial
• DON’T forget to highlight your skills in bold, clearly, close to the top of your resume

The Why’s –

There are many reasons for my advice above, some of these reasonings you probably already know – some you don’t.

• Listing your resume in chronological order helps us to see your most recent experience and if its relevant to our role
• Writing your general location on your resume helps us to ensure you are in the jobs location
• Putting your direct email address on your resumes helps us to schedule zoom interviews easily, and ensure you get our communication
• Choosing a template that suits you & the role, helps us to understand more about your personality and suitability quickly
• Putting very short experience on your resume (if its not an internship or contract) shows recruiters that you job-hop and are unlikely to stay in any role we put you in
• Writing about what you did is not eye-catching, writing about what you achieved – is for example (I helped with organising projects and they went very well and were in budget. Does not appear as good as (Achieved a 90% on time project delivery rate ensuring all projects were within budget. Maintained 99% customer satisfaction & was nominated as best project manager for Q1 &2). Always try to add facts and figures to your resume – its impressive.
• Giving a brief outline of the company (in my opinion is very helpful) for example a short synopsis such as “Personal Best Worldwide are a global recruitment company, specialising in low-cost hires. I worked with them as the Director of recruitment & some of my achievements in the role have been;)”  is great to let the recruiter or hiring manager know if that company is relevant to their role/company.
• As I mentioned earlier, recruiters on average spend 5 minuets scanning your CV, and we are guilt of – if the font isn’t readable, or takes too much hard-work to decipher – we move on.

What we look for-

I know you are all probably dying to know what recruiters look for on your resume, or what they consider a red flag, well read on to find out.

• JOB HOPPING – less than 2 years at each job tells us you either have no loyalty to the company you work for, or you aren’t very good at your job and keep getting fired. It also shows instability and a lack of content in your work life.
• READABILITY – If you’re resume/CV is poorly spaced out, written in a tiny font, or not ATS friendly, it shows us you aren’t serious about standing out from the crowd.
• NO SKILLS – if you don’t list any of your skills on your resume, likely we cannot identify what you’re good at, and will move on.
• LONGEVITY – we love longevity – most people who have at least 4+ years with a company on their resume will make it to the yes pile
• NO STATS – We want to see clear, communicable stats, with percentages and clear achievements.
• BAD GRAMMAR & SPELLING – remember different countries use different spellings – If you are American and applying for jobs in the UK & Europe, ensure to use proper English and not American. If you’re British and applying across the pond, edit your resume to speak their language & use American Spellings.

If you are having no luck with getting a first interview – try these tips & tricks to improve your resume – hopefully you’ll get a foot in the door. If you believe this content was helpful and you want to see more you can follow us on FB & LinkedIn below.

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