Making the most of your CV - what first-time job hunters need to understand

Nine seconds. That’s the average time an employer spends looking at a prospective employee’s CV.

You can spend hours carefully compiling your CV but what it comes down to is that first impression you make with the first few lines of your opening statement. It’s that first impression that will often decide whether you get through the door for an interview.

At the end of the day, that’s what you want your CV to do for you – get you in front of a prospective employer. At that point, it’s up to you.

Now I know that different employers will give differing advice as to what they want to see in a candidate’s CV but let me share my own views based on 26 years of being at the receiving end of literally hundreds of CVs, many of them speculative and others in response to a recruitment drive. The same rules apply.

Over the years, I’ve felt that many schools and universities have done their students an injustice in the way they guide and prepare them for the practical aspects of securing that all-important first job.  Pro forma templates don’t do it for me or any other business owner I know. Preparing a CV is not an academic undertaking, it’s an exercise in communication, and opportunity to stand out, impress and get noticed.

The people I invite for interview are those who make me feel something in those first few seconds. People forget what you say to them and what you do for them but they never forget how you make them feel. I want to see individuality, passion, curiosity and genuine enthusiasm rather than stock phrases.  Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear. Be yourself, be authentic, be honest.

Don’t use language that you wouldn't use in the pub when you’re out with your mates. No jargon; no big words.  It's all about effective communication.

I want to see some understanding of my company, my sector and my challenges, and particularly what you think you can contribute and how you can make a difference.

Bring yourself to life for me. Make it real. Tell me why it should be you that gets offered that precious interview slot.

Don't forget to personalise. It takes only a moment to look at a company’s website and find the name of the MD. You’d be amazed at how many CVs are addressed to ‘Dear Sir or Madam’, or ‘To whom it may concern’. I won’t read any more of them because these are from candidates without imagination.

All too often I interview people who told me in their CV that they admire what we do and then we subsequently discover they haven’t actually bothered to visit our website. It really does happen.

There’s no question that presentation is important – I don’t want to see a wall of text. Make it easy to look at and read. Choose a good typeface, plenty of line space, adequate margins on both sides. Bring the thing to life with good headings: just because it’s a ‘formal’ CV doesn’t mean you can’t bring your own individuality to it.

Spelling and grammar are vital in my business as they should be in any business. Get the apostrophes correct! However good the CV, if it’s full of errors of whatever kind, it stops there. To me it means that there hasn’t been enough effort to check your work.

I’m less interested in academic qualifications but I am particularly keen to see someone who done something for themselves, who can show evidence of proactivity, travel, working in a team, people who have actively sought work experience or engaged in making a difference in their community.

All these things tell me that I’m dealing with someone who is prepared to strive for something, someone who understands something of what it takes to work in a team and how important it is to make a difference. These are qualities I value hugely in my team. Don’t bury this information at the bottom of the CV.  This is the information I want to see prominently displayed, not necessarily your hard-earned qualifications.

Use your imagination and try to put yourself in the shoes of the person at the receiving end of the CV and remember that yours could be the 20^th CV in the pile.

Think about what are the things I really want to read about, as well as those things I might not be so interested in. For example, don’t waste words and my time in the opening paragraphs telling me how hard working, honest and reliable you are. I’m going to take all that for granted. Any lack of these qualities will ensure you don’t get far.

All it takes is a bit of thought and awareness.  Good luck.

Are we sitting too comfortably?

Our biggest opportunities exist outside our own comfort zone.  It’s up to us to find the courage and self-belief to break out, grab them and grow.

As owners and managers of agencies we have a responsibility to enable our employees to do the same.

We need to make sure they feel supported, engaged and inspired enough to want to break out of their own comfort bubbles, reach out and grab those opportunities and in so doing, grow as people and professionals, and through that growth add value to the business.

The same of course, applies to us! We can only be better leaders and managers if we too are prepared to embrace change.

Easier said than done?

Engagement within the context of stakeholder alignment is clearly one of the biggest challenges facing agency owners. We all recognise that fully engaged staff who feel valued, empowered and supported are key to creating and maintaining an authentically sustainable business.

It’s not as simple as looking for the ‘right’ people with the ‘right’ skills. The right skillset is clearly essential but the real challenge is to bring together and unify that blend of passions, values and personalities that, with the right support, can enable individuals to be outstanding in everything they do.

Research shows that money is further down the list of criteria than we might think in people’s career aspirations. Important, yes but what ranks higher is feeling engaged and valued, and having the opportunity to make a difference, alongside enjoyment, challenge and social interaction.

At a recent Dale Carnegie event, it was revealed that a surprisingly low one in three of employed people in the UK today feel they are actively engaged in the workplace. The remaining two thirds feel either passively engaged, or not engaged at all. That’s quite a statistic.

It’s a fact too that 69% of workers interviewed would be prepared to move jobs for a pay rise of just 5%. If people are prepared to move for so little, relatively speaking, then clearly a lot of employers have a problem, one that goes well beyond the challenges of staff retention and continuity.

There are still too many agency employers paying lip service to engagement, as they do to values.

As agency managers and employers we need to make genuine, sustainable efforts to make our teams feel valued. The start of that process has to involve empathy and an in-depth appreciation of what our employees want and need, and what they have a right to expect from us. And it has to be genuine.

Rewards, training, clarity, empowerment and knowledge are all part of the rainbow of engagement but it starts with us, the owners and managers. Our teams have to believe in us as leaders. They have to see that we have passion, a sense of direction, ability and values. They also need to view us as effective role models and recognise our behaviours as reflecting genuine organisational integrity.

And that doesn’t just matter at director and owner level. The relationship employees have with their immediate line manager is even more critical. It’s not just what we do that’s important to the team, it's how we do it and the authenticity we exhibit.

The theory is sound and fairly simple. Making it happen and keeping it happening are anything but. We’ll have phases of everything aligning and working well and then, often imperceptibly we lose it. It happens.

The important thing is to know and believe that it’s the right way of doing business, to keep the aspiration alive prioritise and invest in communication with our employees. Let’s keep working at making it happen.

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