Beefing Up your CV
Clients need to be able to compare your experience on a project with the current work load they have or the project pipeline they have pending.
If your CV matches more of what they have then you are more likely to get an interview.
The school of thought that says 'less is more' is wrong! If you have less information then you end up in the 'maybe' pile of CVs and then you never get an interview. The 'maybe' pile is the same as the 'no' pile.
I would recommend that you highlight your most recent two, three or four projects. Ideally you will have one project at a time, as that is the easiest to read. Please put your projects under each employer; having a separate projects section doesn't work as well as putting the projects beneath each company.
The following is a good base line for information to have on each project.
Project Information:
- Client/project/business type
- Project length / Project value / Number of people on Project
- Technology of the project
- Technology you used
- Your role
- What you did
- What 'value add' you gave (cheesy but true)
The more specific you are about what you have done the easier it is for clients to read your CV and request an interview. If a project has the following rough outline you should say which bits you did:
- Pre-Sales
- Demo
- Bid/quote
- Requirements definition
- Functional requirements
- Business analysis
- Project plan
- Technical specification
- Programming specification
- Development
- Test plan
- Testing
- Installation
- Implementation
- Go live
- User training
- Class room training
- One on one training
- Designing the training course
- Application Support.
I am sure there are lots more bits, but spell out what you did; if you spent three weeks in Siberia getting the requirements specification in Russian then say so! If you were on site for 20 days, say so. If you were chargeable, say so.
Nine out of ten people get their next job on the basis of their last job, so drill into that most.
Try to avoid saying, "I covered the whole project lifecycle and delivered on time and to budget"!
Example of a Project on a CV
"ERP implementation in ABC’s European aftermarket division (Automotive industry), in substitution of three different packages.
"The project spanned 3 years, had a value of €800.000 and involved a team of about 20 people (8 in my company, 6 of the local partners and 6 of the customer) + 30 key users.
"The Technology used was Axapta 3.0 (Finance, Sales, Purchases, Warehouse, Manufacturing, Enterprise Portal) and specifically I worked with Axapta, Project Server, Sharepoint, Visio.
"As the International Project Manager I led the pre-sales phase through the Demo sessions, the Prototype build and finally the Scope definition; then I coordinated people during the project, matching customer expectations with time and budget constraints.
"ABC was the very first Axapta project in Italy, with 250 users; I had to build the team, implement the project management methodology and design the appropriate technical infrastructure."
Typeface
Please put your CV in 'Times New Roman' 10. It is what business is done in. Newspapers, books and magazines are written in Times New Roman. Your CV is a business document so put it in the universal typeface of business!
My sister is a marketing professional with a budget of £6M pa, she told me that tests have shown that people can read faster and understand more when presented with Times New Roman than any other type face. So, if you are serious about finding a new job, follow her advice and put your CV in Times New Roman.
Format
Put the names of the Employers, dates and job title in this format:
SMITH PLC
OCTOBER 2000 – JUNE 2005
APPLICATION SUPPORT MANAGER
Capital letters and bold on left-hand side of the page.
And please put the whole month (August not Aug etc) and the whole year (1999 not 99), it looks so much more professional.
Tables and Boxes
Avoid using boxes and tables. There is no good reason for having boxes or tables on your CV. If you have them remove them!
Many companies use scanning technology to enter CVs on the database - we do at Ambis. If you put your CV in boxes the software misses it. From a personal perspective having to manually load someone's postal and email address because the software cannot deal with tables and boxes is infuriating.
Having lots of boxes reduces your potential of finding a new role, because in some instances your CV will be rejected by the software. Microsoft have a lot to answer for with their CV template!
Company Information
It is very useful to have one line, or a few words, about what your employer/ ex employer did. It gives the CV a sense of clarity and it makes it easier to keep reading it. Be careful not to go overboard: you are not trying to sell shares in the company, and if you write too much or it is too 'glowing' then readers might question your motivation.
Most Relevant First
If you have fantastic experience of Accounting or ERP software that Ambis' clients are going to be most interested in, then how easy is it for the clients to find that? If it is page one, with the technology in bold, great; if it is page three, hidden in some randomly created table, then you are making it very hard to get an interview.
Bullet Points
If you want to use bullet points, please use standard ones. CVs with two, three or four different types of bullet points look weird. And - please - no funky pointers in full colour. It takes the reader's focus away from your technical experience.
Technology Experience
I look at a vast number of CVs every week and the thing that I am looking for is the technical experience. Quite often I can't find the relevant skills. Sometimes people's CV are buried in drivel about being a fast learner or working well as a team player or individual, or even about how every project has been delivered on time and to budget, and the technology is not mentioned.
I delete these CVs and I guess my clients would as well. Your CV is going to get you an interview based on demonstrating your technical skills clearly and easily to the reader. If you reread your CV how easily can you find the technical skills?
Address and Contact Details
Without question at the top of the CV; if you live in a town that people might not have heard of, put something that might help them. Please avoid putting your address in either the header or footer sections of the CV as it just makes it hard to click on the email address. I understand that Microsoft recommend this as a standard layout. They are wrong.
And make sure you have an email address on your CV.
Please put spaces in your phone number. The first thing I want to do is call, and if the number has spaces then I can read it, and dial it. If it is one long string I can't dial it; I have to put spaces in first (I know it sounds petty).
Word RTF & Adobe
Microsoft Word is by far the best format to use. Firewalls often block HTML, PDF or other advanced formats. Note: if you are using Word 2007, older versions of Word can not open your document without downloading converter files. Therefore remember to save your CV as a Word 1997-2003 document.
Do not use 'Rich Text Format' as this type of formatting can include macros which can hide viruses so, again, firewalls will often block these attachments.
Please avoid Adobe. Why anyone would use a document format that stops the recipient editing it is utterly beyond me. This is your CV, you want people to be working with it, not admiring it! However, the biggest problem with Adobe is that it isn't recognised by the scanning and automatic loading software that recruiters use. At Ambis we have spent £10,000 on the most advanced software so that we can automatically load people, with their skills, addresses and contact details, but we can't do it with Adobe.
Photos
If you are a genuinely good looking person then it might help - or it might make people not take you seriously. In almost all cases I would avoid adding a photo to the CV. But it you feel you have to, then here are a few things to avoid:
- the party shot,
- the holiday photo from the bar,
- the T-shirt shot (wear a suit and a tie),
- the living room snap (ooh look at his sofa), and finally avoid
- the pensive sideways portrait.
Education
Put the highest qualification first, so MSc, BSc, HND and so on. If you got a first, a 2.1 or a 2.2 you should definitely put it on your CV. I would recommend not putting your school on, as nobody is interested! And leave out the fact that you have Maths and English. So you education should look like this:
BSc (Hons) Computing 2.1
BTEC National in Computer Studies MERIT
6 GCSEs
OR
BSc (Honours) Psychology 2.2
2 A Levels
3 AS Levels
8 GCSEs
If you went to a good university then you should put that on.
Sales and Pre Sales CVs
If you are in sales or Pre Sales your CV will look very different from a technical CV. First of all your CV must have your successes and wins - your deals. If it doesn't have them then it is not a sales or Pre Sales CV. My experience is that for Sales and Pre Sales the first question is:
"What products have you sold?"
The next questions are:
"How much did you sell?", and "What was your target?"
If the answers are not immediately obvious, with a pound sign in front, then the assumption has to be that you did not sell very much.
Sales people tend to have targets and be rewarded with Bonuses, On Target Earnings, packages and commission. If you have been in sales for a long time then the rewards you have received should be documented on your CV. It might make your CV look slightly vulgar and perhaps too obvious, but you will get a lot more interviews and a lot more opportunities to prove yourself.
Sales people work as part of a team of people who cover marketing, lead generating, appointment making, Pre Sales, demonstrating, responding to ITT and tenders, bids, presenting, and closing. It is always helpful to know which of these you did and the more specific the better. This extra information allows clients to understand how you can fit into their sales team.
Why Should you take My Advice?
I have spent 20 years as a recruiter working for the top IT recruitment organisations in London. I have always been the most successful recruiter at these organisations. I have helped a lot of people find new jobs. And CVs are what I do for a living!
I am not a professor or a journalist, instead I find Accounting, ERP and CRM focused IT people jobs in the UK. My advice is based on successfully delivering what my clients want on a daily basis.
If you have any feedback on these notes I would be interested to hear from you. Good hunting!
Jake