Your Resume Isn’t Helping
Every day, recruiters see a lot of horrible CVs, Resumes and Profiles which are damaging to the people who write them. Fix it.
Many recruiters simply discard badly structured profiles, some will try to understand the profile. Recruiters can only deal with so many people and Companies rarely incentivize internal or external recruiters to help job seekers present themselves better.
The best-intentioned job seeker with a profile that distracts or encourages bias, will have trouble passing low-level screening and might trigger discomfort/unconscious bias in the potential interviewers.
Match your CV to the type of application
If you are referred into a role or know the hiring team, your CV/Resume format doesn’t matter that much. Just ask them for a sample of what they want to see or send them what you have.
People normally worry about their CV/Resume when they apply for jobs online. This is not the most effective way to get a job and I don’t recommend it. Just like relying on recruiters to find you a role, it isn’t a good return on investment. Instead, reaching out directly to those roles and companies where you fit best is the most effective.
If you are going to spend time reformating or rewriting your CV/Resume, you should write your CV/Resume to minimize the opportunity to distract from your capability/fit for the role. There will be a minority of reviewers who disqualify you just because you didn’t include a photo or salary details. You cannot cater to every possible interest so focus on optimizing a profile for the best outcomes across most situations.
It shouldn’t have a photo
Your looks aren’t predictive of your success on the job. Please don’t include a photo. It’s another distraction from your actual skills and content that shouldn’t be part of the review process.
Common triggers should be hard to find
Your CV/Resume shouldn’t make it any easier than it already is to trigger discrimination. Anything that is a common trigger like gender, marital status, age, total years of working experience should be excluded.
Write about specific accomplishments
Generic statements like “more than 20 years experience in XYZ” don’t help your profile trigger interest. And you run the risk of triggering the bias talked about in the last section. Instead, talk about the specific learning/accomplishments/experiences which make up that 20 years.
Graphics won’t save you
You are spending too much time formatting, reformatting and playing with graphics. Your CV is about presenting facts and evidence which don’t play well to graphics. Unless your job is creating graphics (then you should have a portfolio rather than a CV), your resume should be text only.
Metrics and stats only look great to you
If you are going to put sales, performance or other stats in your CV, make sure that they make sense. Putting “achieved 400% revenue growth” without the actual sales numbers doesn’t mean anything. When your stats are confusing/vague, people automatically assume that you are hiding something.
What do you want to do next and why?
As legacy industries consolidate and new industries appear over night, more and more people need to change sector. How you explain what you want to do next and why is more important than before.
The more focused the top section of your CV/Resume is on that, the more likely you will trigger interest and a response from companies that are looking for or open to your kind of mindset.
Find companies and roles
Now that you know what you want to do and why — start thinking about where you want to do it. These things come together with writing your CV/Resume. You want it to look like where you want to go.
Putting it all together
It is possible to make a simple and clear CV which works for most people in most situations. I recommend just using the format provided by LinkedIn as a single, live CV/Resume. You can download it and don’t need to bother with multiple versions. If you need a document version separate to your LinkedIn profile, this is a basic sample.