The Recruitment Radar – The Weekly Prescription
by Craig Burton
Four Remedies for treating your CV:
- Proof-reading: Just one dodgy use of the wrong ‘there/they’re/their’ could be the difference between job-hunting success or failure. Make sure you proofread anything you send out. Or better yet, get someone else to do it for you – a fresh pair of eyes on anything you write will do your CV no harm.
- Simplify your CV layout: With so little time to make an impression, your CV needs to have clearly defined headings and a structure where recruiters/hiring managers can easily identify the information they want to see first. Don’t complicate things by trying to get clever with how your CV is laid out – keep it simple.
- A short, snappy personal statement: A good opening statement could be the decider in whether your CV will be put forward for a job, or won’t. Keep it short, to the point and avoid the typical clichés (I’d hope that anyone would be a “hard worker” if they applied for a job I was offering!).
- A ‘normal’ file format for your CV: I’ve seen some strange cases in my time; Notepad documents, Excel files, etc. If you send a CV and it isn’t a Word, RTF or PDF document, you’re doing it wrong!