There are many road blocks and hurdles to getting that great job. Your CV is the first road block and here are some of the ways you can improve it:

Your CV will face a lot of competition, it must be relevant, have the right key words, highlight your skills and be easy to find and to process. Statistics (shockingly) say that the average recruiter will only spend 7 seconds to quickly scan over a CV and the key things they are looking for in the first 4 seconds are where you have worked, what software, products and technology you have worked with, start and end dates, education / qualifications / certifications and career achievements. They only have 2 seconds left to find anything else relevant in your CV that will impress them.

Next to put people off come typos, spelling errors and unprofessional email addresses. After that the format of your CV is going to be very important. If you make the common mistake of putting your CV in a PDF format, most recruitment software ATS (automatic tracking systems) will not be able to scan it and read it and recruiters will have difficulty formatting it to their agency branded CV.

Your LinkedIn profile should have good organisation, solid career information, recommendations and a professional photograph – even if your recruiter doesn’t look at it, the chances are that the company who are interviewing you will.

Think about key word searches – recruiters are finding you on their recruitment software database by key words. They may also be finding you on Job Boards and on LinkedIn, and key words are the essential tools that will pull you up in a candidate search. It is no good writing a book about your experience in your cover letter and then not putting this information on your CV – only 15% of recruiters will ever read your cover letter, nor will a cover letter come up in a key word search. So make sure all relevant information is in the body of your CV.

Your CV is only the first hurdle, but it is an important one, so try and get it right from the beginning

There are many road blocks and hurdles to getting that great job. Your CV is the first road block and here are some of the ways you can improve it:

Your CV will face a lot of competition, it must be relevant, have the right key words, highlight your skills and be easy to find and to process. Statistics (shockingly) say that the average recruiter will only spend 7 seconds to quickly scan over a CV and the key things they are looking for in the first 4 seconds are where you have worked, what software, products, and technology you have worked with, start and end dates, education / qualifications / certifications and career achievements. They only have 2 seconds left to find anything else relevant in your CV that will impress them.

Next to put people off come typos, spelling errors and unprofessional email addresses. After that the format of your CV is going to be very important. If you make the common mistake of putting your CV in a PDF format, most recruitment software ATS (automatic tracking systems) will not be able to scan it and read it and recruiters will have difficulty formatting it to their agency branded CV. 

Your LinkedIn profile should have good organisation, solid career information, recommendations and a professional photograph – even if your recruiter doesn’t look at it, the chances are that the company who are interviewing you will.

Think about key word searches – recruiters are finding you on their recruitment software database by key words. They may also be finding you on job boards and on LinkedIn, and key words are the essential tools that will pull you up in a candidate search. It is no good writing a book about your experience in your cover letter and then not putting this information on your CV – only 15% of recruiters will ever read your cover letter, nor will a cover letter come up in a key word search. So make sure all relevant information is in the body of your CV.

Your CV is only the first hurdle, but it is an important one, so try and get it right from the beginning.

Whilst walking the dogs this morning I met up with my retired neighbour Alan, who had an amazing career as the FD of a huge supermarket company. We got talking about recruitment, he said this:

"I was rubbish at interviewing, I used to make my mind up in 2 minutes, and then spend the next hour being polite because they had made the effort to come and see me. I hired 300 people that way."

So when people tell you "first impressions count", they speak the truth. Here are a few simple rules:

• Dress to impress
• Avoid being late
• Stand up in reception
• Shoulders back
• Smile
• Think positive thoughts (it is going to go well, they are going to like me, I can do this)
• Prepare your greeting

Don’t under estimate the power of loyalty. If you are employed and you find a new job you will have to resign. Without question resigning is one of the worst things to do. It is a betrayal of trust, it shows that you put your career ahead of the company’s needs. It makes your boss look bad. And it does a lot of damage to your relationship with your current employer.

To replace you, your employer is going to experience upheaval, change and significant cost. So you don’t want to be resigning unless you are going to leave.

Once you resign it will go one of two ways:

You work your notice and leave

You are persuaded to stay

The people who stay, most often get a pay rise that matches their other job offer and a promise that things will change (training, promotion, new projects, new technology, new role), and they get a massive attack on loyalty, induced by being made to feel part of the team and company and that they are loved.

About half the people who are persuaded to stay are back looking for a job in 3 months, because whatever promises they were made didn’t happen. In most cases things do not change, but the damage to the employer / employee relationship is done.

So my advice is don’t look for a job, go and talk to your boss and say:

“I am paid less than market rate, I want a pay rise, but I don’t want to have to resign to get it.”

Recruitment is about finding the right job for the right person, so understanding a candidate’s motivation to change role is crucial to a good match. I am always very keen to hear why people want to change job, so I ask questions about it and I hear some interesting stories and amazing reasons; often I advise candidates to stay put because their motivation is not strong enough and they should be able to work out their issues without changing their job.

What is helpful, is an honest appraisal of your situation. If you hate your boss, fine. If you are stuck in a rut tell me that. If you haven’t had a pay rise in 3 years and your skills have vastly improved, I want to know. If you got caught photocopying yourself at the Christmas party, just tell me; if you are going to be made redundant, I want to know about it. But your motivation to change roles needs to make sense, it needs to be real, because you are going to get asked about it at interview and you are going to end up telling the truth, so being honest from the start will make you look better regardless of the reason.

My pet hates are these two:

"I want a new challenge" (But you don't know what the challenge is)

"It is time for a change" (But you can’t explain why)

The people that get offered the jobs are those that demonstrate enthusiasm, so here are a few tips on being enthusiastic:

• Lean forward when the other person is talking, (just past upright)
• Ask questions about the job that involves you (How will I…?)
• Ask questions about the team that involves you (Who will I…?)
• Ask questions about the interviewer’s career (When did you…?)
• Ask questions about your first few days/ weeks in the job (What will I…?)
• Look the interviewer in the eye
• “Tell me about the team I will be working with?” (then smile)
• “What can you say about the type of projects I will be working on?”
• “Where will I sit?”
• “Who will I work with?”
• “Who would you say would be the best mentor I could have from the current team?”

If you want to really connect with the interviewer, make a connection between their background and your background that relates to when they first joined the company. For example, “When you first started you hadn’t done any training like me, how did you get past that?”

Preparation or practice is the key to success at interview. If you go for 3 interviews with 3 companies, then you will have learnt about the predictable questions. You will be in the swing of it and have every chance to shine at any subsequent interviews.

If however you only go for 1 interview, then you need to prepare so you are fluent in the easy and obvious questions. This will enable you to take your time on difficult questions without looking slow. Here are 4 questions that you are going to be asked:

• “What do you do in your current role?”
• “Why are you leaving?”
• “What do you know about our company?”
• “What do you want to do next?”

Your answers to these “easy ones” should be:

• Fluent
• Sharp and to the point
• They must be positive; you need to take personal responsibility for what has gone wrong
• Your answers should show off your strengths

The real trick is to practice the answers out loud, use the words, answer the questions and actually rehearse your answers out loud to yourself.

Even smokers don’t like to hire smokers because there is a perception that they spend a lot of time outside the office smoking.

If you turn up smelling of smoke it is never going to help you get a new job. 

Try to avoid smoking in the car on the way to the interview. Have some nicotine gum or a fake cigarette handy.

Accept the fact that travelling to the interview is going to be stressful and the interview is likely to be nerve wracking. 

Think about how you are going to cope with your lack of nicotine and have a strategy ready.

If you prepare like a champ, you won't look like a chump. So these are the things you should take to your interview:

• Take a pen
• Take your glasses (both long and short distance for tests or presentations)
• Take a note book (something smart and new)
• Take a list of questions
• Take a copy of your CV

You might not need all of these but it would be very handy if you had them with you, just in case.

CV Writing

Avoid Adobe and PDF CVs. Rich Text Format will do the job if you don't own a copy of Word.

Recruiters need to process your CV and most recruitment software can't process PDFs.

So you end up not getting loaded on the recruiter's database, or all the formatting from your CV is removed and it looks dreadful.

There are plenty of jobs out there with stable, cash rich companies who have full order books and tons of work for you.  Don’t believe the media hype; the ERP, CRM and Accounting Softwaremarket is still strong and there is a demand for good people. At the moment, you can have your pick of the good jobs – and with decent money, as clients compete for the best people, so don’t sit still in a bad job, get out there and find yourself a good one.

Please use Word format for your CV, PDF documents are much more difficult to process. It doesn’t matter how many pages your CV is as long as the last job has great detail. 90% of people get their next job on experience gained in their last / current job, so you need to go into detail about what you are doing currently:

How many projects; size / scope of the projects; technology that you have used on the project; what was your involvement?

If you fill in the gaps on your CV you will get more interviews; if you believe that you will be asked these questions instead at interview, you are mistaken. Fill out the gaps, so that the client can imagine putting you on a project from day one.

And please - no weird type faces. It is proven that people can read Times New Roman faster than anything else because we learn to read books that are written in it. So your CV is more easily read in Times New Roman. More easily read = more interviews.