The one True Way to make your CV standout, Ignore at your Peril!
It’s quite common to see people complain about not receiving (positive) feedback of next stage of job
application process they clearly meet the requirements, when it is that their CV isn’t written in the right
way and reinforced to stand out to get the desired result as they don’t have the true understanding of
what a CV is and is meant to do.
And so, they get to see people less qualified than they are get invitations. They become infuriated and wonder how these things happen.
But the truth is that those less qualified people have a sound understanding of what a CV is, have mastered the art of CV writing, know what it should entail and not, ways to optimize it to increase chances of success, or employ the services of professionals with such knowledge.
Having written CV for self and for others, yielding many positive results (feedback, interview, jobs) armed with these understandings, I will tell you the necessary things you need to know and do to make your CV standout and have an edge in the increasingly crowded and competitive job market. They will be 10 solid tips or cues and the first starts with knowing what a CV is. It begins in the next page. Enjoy reading!
1. It’s a marketing tool not a document and you’re a product not a candidate.
This is what a CV is and for and the one thing I implore you take hold of if you are going to make use of
just one thing from this writing piece as this set in motion other essential things about CV: your CV isn’t a document that details your life history -of course it does, but not merely -it’s more of a marketing tool or better still, a marketing document that brands your career information to sell you to intended recruiter.
Knowing this transforms your mindset since you now see yourself as something (a product) that is being marketed and with a tool that’s the CV.
So, rather than just passing plain document of docile information out there applying for a job role, you now thoughtfully curate potent contents and fashion them in a way that makes you irresistibly buyable, as for a product.
And to think of it you have more in common with a product in the market because, just as for a product, you are competing with many other people out there for the attention of and procurement by your target.
How do you stand out among other applicants and appear appealing to your target begin to ring a bell in your head.
But getting this right starts with knowing really your target –what he/she wants –other applicants and what they are likely bringing to the table.
It takes a lot of reflections and research –about the organization, its mission, vision and culture, and the job role which give a glimpse into the skills and qualifications fellow applicants would have, and thus help one in distinguishing oneself.
2. Leverage strategic positioning –your best foot forward.
You see, selling yourself becomes easy and possible once you know what the reviewer wants and more
and what gives you an edge over other applicants that the reviewer is most likely to value.
What makes this effective is that you communicate it straight, strategically at where it matters and is most potent.
There’s a reason brands inscribe unique benefits on their products not common to other products and
boldly where it can be easily seen on the product.
And there’s more to why they then fight for visible and easily sighted position in stores for such product, to aid customers’ easy access to the product and allow them see the unique information on the product.
Brands wouldn’t hesitate to let you know on your favourite TV show you can’t do without every 4pm that they are the only one giving scholarship to the less privileged among peer brands. This gets you.
The effectiveness of this approach is why you needn’t shy away from asserting yourself and must inscribe exactly what reviewers are actively looking for and that which sets you apart in your CV and if possible at the beginning of your CV or must hold their attention enough with directions to guide them to that important thing they are on the lookout for.
For instance, if a recruiter is looking for a person with a significant fundraising experience and I not only have such but have raised millions of dollars doing several fund raising projects and one in particular is remarkable where I helped raise over a million dollars that ensured potable water and shelter to a 1,000 people in some rural area.
I wouldn’t waste time to let him/her know and I would shout at the top of my lungs communicating it from the very first read and sprinkle like experience around to have it ringing in the recruiter’s head.
3. It’s not a personal or professional profile, it’s an elevator pitch -route to the recruiter’s heart.
This directly goes in line with leveraging strategic positioning and the putting of one’s best foot forward discussed in the previous section.
It amazes me that many people don’t take personal/professional profile seriously and/or don’t write it well.
Some even omit it. I believe the reason it’s so is that, people don’t know what the use is for or how important it is but I will help you with that.
It’s a common knowledge reviewers have busy schedule and with tons of CV to go through every day they spend average of 5 seconds per CV.
Look at it this way, I’ve got a twinkle-of-an-eye time to check your CV and you are going to give me something mediocre and not a strong opener grabbing me by the jugular and hooking me close from the
very beginning of reading through? You had better be on your A-game.
You should know now, personal/professional profile is one of the first information/section the reviewer would see and (the content there) is what determines if a reviewer would read through your CV or not. It
is what holds the reviewers attention to keep on with your CV.
The profile is your chance to quickly show the reviewer your value. You must thus communicate in it your greatest strength, achievement, win, and your big dream, that you’ve got what the recruiter is looking for and more. It is why I call it the elevator pitch.
The section must tell the reviewer succinctly all he needs to know about you, the values and
qualities you are shipping in to improve and progress his organization.
The profile represents a summary, snapshot of all (great points) in your CV and about you (your mission, vision).
And you want to go at it with your guts selling yourself unapologetically on your qualities and values, evocatively, making it sing, expressive and yet simple and brief in a way that arrests and arouses the reviewer’s interest and sparks his curiosity to know more about you.
Below are some great examples of professional profiles (I did them for people who asked me to rewrite their CVs). See the After and Before.
Example 1: This CV was written specifically for and tailored to an engineering job role for oil and gas
exploration with goal of reduced carbon emission, seeking an early graduate that’s a high achiever, fast
learner, dynamic and with transferrable and collaboration skills. You would see how the below professional profile portrays all the sought qualities, overtly and covertly, being self-proving, while
intertwined with the greatest strengths of the applicant. You would also notice how the points form on
one another like an art and corroborate into a story.
After:
‘A highly ambitious and versatile professional engineer with a robust background in molecular engineering and over 10 years’ resounding practical experience in project management and has utilised learning from said field to spearhead and collaborate with teams and partners to successfully execute US$6.75m telecom projects of two of Africa’s biggest telecom companies (MTN, Etisalat). Has transitioned into petroleum engineering field where knowledge, skills and experience honed from molecular engineering and project management are built on and are deployed in cost-effectively navigating and optimising sustainable oil and gas explorations with reduced carbon footprints. Seeking exciting graduate role that uses and transforms mentioned qualities in ethical energy expedition
to power the world.’
Before:
‘Performance-oriented professional with solid record of accomplishments in telco, oil and gas and project management. I am actively pursuing another challenging career opportunity in the oil and gas industry where I can utilize my extensive experience in various positions involving engineering, project and interface management that would prove beneficial to your progressive company. Proven ability to provide stewardship, promoting strong collaboration between stakeholders, I possess strong leadership, communication and problem solving skills with a hands-on approach and ability to work in remote areas and challenging conditions.’
Example 2: This CV although is focused to the agriculture field, is generic and a good example of pitching strongly one’s value, strength, attributes and capabilities in a way that captures the recruiter’s attention. And while it doesn’t give examples of major project achieved which could arouse reviewer’s curiosity (as Example 1 above), everything said in the profile is expounded on in the body of the CV, and making a bold claim in the below manner with no example would likely drive the recruiter to check the rest of the CV to confirm the veracity of what’s being claimed, which actually did when this CV was used to apply for a job in UK. Although the job wasn’t secured as the position was already filled, the recruiter greatly commended the well written and attention-grabbing nature of the CV and placed the bearer on future list.
After:
‘A seasoned agricultural extensionist with more than 3 years’ proven track record of developing and moving new commercial farms to profitable level, in different regions. Commercially astute and entrepreneurial with an instinct for identifying and maximising new agribusiness opportunities. Experienced in strategically positioning brand and products to enable wide, organic brand visibility and great adoption, sales and commercialisation of launched products. Endowed with great coordination skills ensuring quality control and swift flow of commodities across the supply chain and that end-users get value for their money, timely. An excellent facilitator adept at training and supporting farmers for a successful farm venture and also building capacity of teams to reach their full potential and be effective and efficient.’
Before:
• Young and talented Agricultural Extensionist driven to ensure facilitation of sustainable solutions to
challenges in the agricultural and rural sector
• Recent graduate with excellent research, time management and problem solving skills. Ability to function at
a high level in a wide variety of settings.
• Hard-working, resourceful and highly motivated Development agent, looking to apply my education and
skills to a job in your organization.
4. It’s an art not a disjoined work. Write it like a story, with a goal, and don’t be boring.
The need to write CV like a story, art has been exemplified with personal /professional profile. CV should
be like an art, written as a story with all entities connecting and building on one another.
It should have a goal; the goal helps to vet what contents get to be included in a CV and ensures coherence.
If you ever read a disjointed CV you’d understand how frustrating and a turn off it can be.
Imagine you are a recruiter and accepting applications for an agriculture field worker role that requires knowledge and experience of field operations but instead you start seeing something else as teaching experience, information having to do with engineering on an applicant’s CV which does not connect.
Of course, life experiences are not one way and many times people apply for jobs not entirely related to their discipline or that one has no full experience in.
But, at least a little thoughtfulness is required, where one could tweak those experiences to show their relatedness and transferability –for instance, showing you teach agriculture which could form a good theoretical foundation to practical farm work, or portraying teaching cultivates a fast learning attitude where you can quickly learn to teach new topics, a skill you could leverage to adapt to field work of the agriculture role or that your engineering experiences could be handy with operating and managing farm machineries.
The point is to find a connection than just lay the experiences bare like that leaving the recruiter confused finding a link. A good way to build coherence is to link all sections together with keywords or continue subsequent section with theme from the previous section.
Going on to expatiate in detail at the work experience section and other parts of the CV what has been said in the professional profile is another excellent way to do this.
All these not only build coherence but make interesting for a read with flow and demonstrate focus in one’s career path and the intentional work put in to writing the CV for that particular job role. See below an excellent example of what’s being discussed:
PROFESSIONAL PROFILE
A seasoned agricultural economist passionate about unlocking potentials in the agricultural sector, rural economy and of SMEs to drive economic growth by seeing to effective distribution, utilisation and optimisation of resources and provision of necessary infrastructure and inputs. Has transitioned into the banking world with said passion and with understanding of agricultural value chains, the economy, and experience of evidence-based policymaking, extend finance at the intersection of modern technology to the unbanked, informal and rural sectors. A natural leader full of energy endowed with the analytic rigour, people and management skills to spearhead teams in achieving daunting goals. Seeking exciting role in an organisation with focus on financial inclusion and deploying finance to critical sectors.
EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
TEAM LEAD, FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS | XYZ BANK 2020 |
KEY ACHIEVEMENT
• Promoted to role of financial transaction having excelled in non-financial role aiding the branch’s swift operation.
TEAM LEAD, NON-FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS | XYZ BANK 2019 |
KEY ACHIEVEMENT
• Helped uptick branch’s value delivery to customer by ensuring effective management and customer support.
OPTIX ENGINEER| TECH ETC. 2017
KEY ACHIEVEMENT
• Helped extend ICT infrastructure across the country and in deepening rural telecom, installing mast in 36 states, aiding digital, financial inclusions and information spread for development of and in integrating the rural economy.
You can see how the two different job roles -Team lead financial and non-financial transactions- but in
the same organization (XYZ BANK) are connected by achievements –performing well in the non-financial transactions role made room for promotion to lead financial transactions unit of the bank.
Financial and non-financial transaction units combine to raise performance of banks and hence the connection and the importance.
Ordinarily, while there is a link between the two job roles, not many will connect it this way and, moreover, there wasn’t connection drawn in the original raw CV until I rewrote it.
Also, you can notice how key achievement of installing ICT infrastructure in 36 states, under Optix Engineer role in TECH ETC., backs up the applicant’s mission expressed in professional profile “to provide necessary infrastructure and inputs to critical sectors”.
5. Achievement over Role description, and Achievement with Impact more powerful.
Examples of poor marketing abound in the product world. A common one is placing features over benefits.
Take for instance the commonly eaten tin-packed sardine fish, Titus. Sardine and its oil are known to
contain beneficial nutrients that do the body good. Contents of Omega-3 fatty acid, oleic acid, minerals,
vitamin-B complex and other vitamins in the fish are the beneficial features, which are what’s printed on
the can.
Now, a person with a science background could comprehend the importance and functions of these nutrients.
But people who are not too literate let alone of science background would find it hard to understand such and even a science literate pre-occupied with daily tasks and bombarded with loads of other products giving him choice-selection problem would rather have a product that doesn’t compound his problems by making things more straightforward and easier to grasp.
Instead, clarifying the fish contains healthy fat that is good for the heart or that the fish and its oil help to
maintain a good heart condition makes things easier for and is more appealing to both categories of
consumers.
That’s benefits over features, and going a step further emphasizing the fish promotes good
health and prolong life stemming from cumulative effect of healthy heart will do well to attract people to
consume the fish than the scientific jargons.
The consumer buying the product, in this way, knows what the product can do and what to expect.
In tandem, the beverage brand Milo gets this right carving makes your children strong and helps them realise their ambitions alongside nutritional composition on the Milo pack.
And all this applies to CV as well and mistakes similar are found in several CVs, too.
What most applicants normally do is they just say what they do on the job without explaining the job role, depicting the achievement they’ve had doing what they do and the impact such achievement have had –on the organisation or to their customers or beneficiaries.
They don’t help recruiters make sense of given information. Hence, they leave gap for recruiter’s questioning and doubt on their fit and capacity to deliver on the job and the changes they can bring to their organization judging by achievement and impact.
Example below details job responsibility, achievement and impact and shows how achievement
and impact corroborate and reinforce job responsibility, leaving no room for questions.
Example 3
LEAD EXTENSION OFFICER | **** INITIATIVES 2018
RESPONSIBILITY
• Encouraged farmers’ adoption of production enhancing inputs and commitment on use by bringing them to their awareness and offering support on their application.
KEY ACHIEVEMENT
• Enabled participating farmers realise improved income having informed their adoption of hybrid grains which sold a premium 25% higher than the regular, market rate, and with the positives reaching their household and families.
6. Technical jargon is useless scrape the fat, or better still, distill it.
The above section explaining importance of achievement has partly touched on the need to remove
technical jargons and make contents of the CV easier for and more impacting on the reviewer.
Technical jargon needlessly drags CV and makes it tedious. I remember doing CV consultation service for a professional accountant and highlighting the need for contents of and technical terms in his CV to be in relatable terms.
What happens most times is that organizations outsource their recruitments to recruitment agencies (often small and unsophisticated) and with HR which are not specialized in one’s field and may not be able to decipher complex technical terms specific to fields they don’t function in.
You would say it is their work and is expected of them to prepare for such things and put the right people
in place, but this happens too often especially in unregulated job market. And even sometimes HRs could be literate enough and technical terms would just be overbearing and unnecessary.
The mentioned professional accountant agreed with all this and even buttressed this sharing instance of an accounting role he interviewed for where the interviewer could not converse with him in basic accounting terms.
Thus, it’s best to be on the safe side doing lesser of technical terms and giving a bit of explanation to help with things.
When you use acronyms in your field do well to write the full meaning. Rather than just dumping your professional accounting certification, go on to offer brief description of what the certification is about and you can illustrate what you’ve done with knowledge from it, the achievement you’ve had with it, which adds more spice to things.
Nonetheless, one cannot totally evade technical terms. I’ve experienced the importance of relatable technical terms.
I once applied for an agricultural job in the UK sending application (CV and cover letter) via email only to get feedback of questionnaire assessment within a minute.
I knew no way it was a human that reviewed my application and replied in that short time, and you need to know this. Many organisations and recruitment agencies now use advance software to rapidly filter through CV for sought requirements, saving on time reviewing thousands of CV, many
which are misfit.
By the second they sieve applicants that are fit for further assessment and applicants get to know their fate almost instantly.
And here is the advice, try to study the job role, the field, even the organisation you are making application to and use terms albeit in a relatable way common to them, sprinkle qualities being sought for the role and key words (as we have seen for professional profile) in your CV to beat the software and even human reviewer.
7. It’s not social tool, do away with personal and undesirable info; be professional and serious.
This is a common knowledge but it must yet be emphasized with how this still occurs in numerous CVs. I have been seeing this common mistake in many CVs.
Unnecessary information must be excused particularly those that have to do with personal information and infer unprofessionalism.
In fact, in organisations or with recruiters that know better one can be disqualified for this as they expect you to know these basic things, and not knowing them could give the recruiter negative perception about one.
Recruiters receiving tonnes of applications use simple things as this to cut applicants off.
Thus, first thing first; do away with this personal information on your CV: age, date of birth, state of origin, nationality, sex, marital status, race, criminal assessment, health related issues, etc. This information could in fact allow for discrimination.
However, there are instances where all/some of these are required, and most times you will be asked to provide them through safe channels and not usually on the CV.
Unprofessional information should also be excused; like funny interests –gaming, chatting, partying. But
times are changing and new careers are opening up, so things thought to be just for fun and/or
undesirable are real jobs now.
There are professional gamers now, there are people who specialise in offering online and specialised therapy keeping clients engaged by chatting with them, and there are those who entertain people by their party vlog. Therefore, it matters what you are applying for.
And these days, organisations are increasingly imbibing a work-fun culture where they expect employees and people they’ll be taking in to not just be able to work but also have the fun side. But you want to do your due diligence and give information accordingly.
Lastly, use professional emails –not one having funny names as uptownboy or sexygirl, et al and avoid
adding numbers for instance, uptownboy007@yahoo.com. You are neither James Bond nor a Hitman.
An email address with your first and last names is better (e.g. mine, tohzeez@gmail.com). This is personalised and even verifies one’s identity.
Also, use the right grammar and write with the appropriate tone and in formal way.
Use “cannot” instead of “can’t”, “going” and not “gonna”, etc. Don’t open statements with gerund.
Using third person (him/her) is better when talking about self than first person (I, me) [this is contested
and there are instances where first person is preferred]. It makes you come across as professional and
polite and gives room to express yourself freely without appearing domineering.
Take note British and American English with location of organisation, job you are applying to.
8. Lesser is better except you’re in medical field, are applying for a civil service position or are an
Aussie.
If you have been following this write up till this stage you should know now that removing unnecessary
things from the CV is what’s recommended and this will inevitably lead to a concise but powerful CV.
Lesser is better no doubt! You don’t want to prolong any piece of information on the CV and risk losing
the attention of the recruiter.
Instead, put what matters and if situation requires the need for longer information, try to make it interesting and impacting.
I like to give for this, example of writing achievement. You may not be able to write achievement without it being lengthy a bit when it requires giving the job role, what is done, the result of what was done, and the impact.
(And since I didn’t mention how to write achievement in way to make it impactful, I like teach you how to write it) You can use the technique called STAR to write it, in full is: S- Situation, T- Task, A-Action, R- Result.
This style involves first creating the scene giving details about the project, then your responsibility, what you did to meet your assigned task, and the result seen. See a good illustration below:
“Convinced with a team of experts, 80% of fruit sellers in 4 Lagos district markets to opt for crate for storage over basket which improved fruit shelf life and their income, a Lagos state initiative. It entailed working with market leaders and employing pictorial diagrams to pitch the benefits of adoption.”
Situation: Project to reduce spoilage, postharvest losses among fruit sellers by Lagos Sate government.
Task: Ensure fruit sellers’ adoption of crate for storage of fruits over basket.
Action: Worked with market leaders and employed pictorial diagrams to pitch the benefits of adoption.
Result: 80% adoption by fruit sellers and an increase in their income from improved fruit shelf life.
Information makes sense by how it’s written and communicated.
You could have all the achievement and still not appear worthy to the reviewer. This is one way people with lower qualifications, less achievements standout, by structuring well and making more impactful little result they have.
To finalise this section, there are several ways to writing achievement different from the STAR method
and which can be less lengthy.
Notwithstanding, without deviating from the theme of this section putting out concise information and that some information would require breaking this rule, there are times when there would be a need to go beyond this conventional way.
Normally, CV is said to be okay at 2 pages and 3 pages at most, however, certain field like medicine and sector, civil service require robust information on applicant’s career and a lengthy CV is acceptable.
CV length can be region specific as for UK where short CV format (of 2-3 pages) is preferred but lengthy otherwise in a place like Australia.
Nigeria follows UK education system and hence the brief CV is the norm in the country.
9. Different stroke for different times, a stone doesn’t kill multiple birds here!
Quit using the same CV to apply for different jobs. It’s unproductive and ineffective.
Stone could be effective to kill a bird, but may not for other big meals and even for similar species, more so that a stone would not kill several birds at the same time. Imagine using the same marketing technique and communication channel to push a product that has diverse audience.
Each job requires its own CV because no two jobs are the same, demanding different requirements.
The discrepancy in CV can be sensed almost immediately by recruiters and could have one come across as lazy and unserious.
Worst is some applicants do a bad job leaving information that makes it glaring their CV is used to apply for another job.
Writing a CV can be tasking a work let alone drafting numerous ones tailoring them for different jobs.
And much as this can be tiring, using same CV for different jobs and getting loads of rejections is more tiring and depressing.
Therefore it’s important to do the right thing. You want to prepare your mind and allow
yourself enough time to do it well.
Best is to have a strategy and draw up a plan, possibly having a target of jobs to be applied for in a month and then developing CV for them to stem overload that comes with writing CV.
Also, one could just develop one main CV or few to an excellent standard and then keep tweaking it or them to different jobs as required. Or otherwise, you could employ the services of a professional CV writer.
10. Cover letter is the fish hook to the recruiter reading the CV, use cover letter always.
Another major mistake applicants make during job application is to send CV without cover letter.
People who triumph go the extra mile and do extra to standout. Attach cover letter to your application even if you are not told so.
Cover letter serves as appetiser to the main course meal. If written well, it helps to
give the reviewer quick view of your value and, as (discussed) for professional profile, helps to move the
recruiter to checking through your CV. You can have a prototype cover letter and adjust accordingly.
Even, cover letter does not have to be a worded document and can be a body of mail in which CV is attached.
As much as cover letter is important, its content and how it’s written is more important.
Like for achievement, there are different ways to writing a cover letter. I like to share how I write mine.
Many times cover letters are one way communication. They do not embody empathy considering the
needs of the person on the receiving end. They just detail information from the applicant’s end. I believe it is not meant to be so.
Having empathy involves seeing from the recruiter’s side, what he or she does, needs and putting forth your value and qualities, how they match what the recruiter is looking for, and how you, embodying these attributes, could bring needed changes and improvement to his/her organisation. This helps you not to come across as being self-serving.
You first of all acknowledge the mission, vision and impact of the recruiting organisation. This not only
helps to show you know about the organisation but also that they are valued.
By this way you put them first than talking right away about yourself and what you want. It makes it easier to talk about yourself and pitch what you want.
You talk about your mission and how it relates with what the organisation does. Then you go a step further emphasising how what you do could help achieve the organisation’s mission and arrive at their vision.
Story-like again. This is how it is done.
Best Regards.
