Why is a CV important when applying for jobs?

Why is a CV important to get a job?

I remember the days after leaving University and needing a job.

I had a check list - a new suit, five shirts, five ties, haircut, briefcase (back in the day when people used them), Filofax (also back in the day when people used them), “oh - and I best get my CV sorted out as well”.

Two hours later, I had knocked up a list of personal details, qualifications and jobs that I had done during my studies, and hey presto - here was my perfect CV.

Now that was 18 years ago and back in the day, these rather modest, ‘list-based’, home-made CVs were just about acceptable.

The question is this…

Does that homemade curriculum vitae work in the current job market?

The answer is a resounding no! There are millions of job seekers in the UK, which means the competition for jobs is fierce. And it’s only going to get more competitive in the current economic climate.

Organisations need to be very sure that any future hire is spot-on and that the right person can add value in their job.

Not to mention that times and trends move on and using the same style of CV that you did after leaving school, college or university is like trying to pay for your petrol with a cheque - it won’t work because it is outmoded.

An employer needs more than a brief list of key points to be suitably impressed to invite you for an interview.

Why is a CV important when applying for jobs?

You may or may not be surprised, but 92% of shortlisting decisions are made from careful scrutiny of CVs (your LinkedIn profile is also an important element now) and a CV is no longer a bullet point list of key skills and jobs (with a job description for each position).

It’s all well and good to list personal details, relevant academic qualifications, jobs, relevant skills, your career history and contact details, but to land your dream job, and optimise your job search, your 2 pages of information needs to be much more compelling.

Note: a CV can range between 2 pages and 4 pages depending on your seniority and focus.

It should be a compelling business case that explains why a potential employer should hire you.

Think about the time and effort that goes into optimising a website and you might get somewhere near the time and effort that should go into optimising a CV for a prospective employer – if you want to stand out, it’s a much deeper subject than most people realise.

The average person thinks a good CV is a list of key skills

I do a heck of a lot of career coaching and outplacement sessions and it astonishes me that your average person still thinks that they can knock up what is nothing more than a list of jobs with half a dozen bullet points underneath each one and expect to get interviews.

It just won’t happen!

A list of key skills and jobs that merely resemble a job description is pretty uninspiring to a recruiter or employer.

Writing a good CV takes time and commitment to make it high impact and give a good impression

The moral of the story is to spend many hours learning the right way to write a CV (and that doesn’t mean reading some random article on the internet written by a search engine optimisation consultant, which is only there to provide a stack of key words to get a company further up the Google rankings).

There’s a fine art to writing a great CV, and you’ll need to understand when to use a reverse chronological order CV, a case study style CV, and one-page executive biography and a skills-based CV. In fact, we have about 9 styles of CV in our toolkit that we wheel out for different customers, in different professions, at different stages of their career.

Supplementing your CV with a personal statement or covering letter may also be required, depending on the position you are applying for.

It’s not always the best person that is offered a job, it’s usually the person who created a CV that matched the requirements of the job and gave evidence that they have a solid track record of achievement. You can’t do this by merely listing previous roles with a few bullet points underneath each entry.

Your CV is the first thing a recruiter sees (unless they looked at your LinkedIn profile first), so to get put forward for a job and convince the recruiter that you are the right person, your CV needs to not just list your skills and experience, but provide evidence that you are awesome at what you do.

Develop your CV writing skills before you write one

It means talking to experts, reading books, getting free CV appraisals and attending workshops on the subject. Once you have the knowledge, you should be spending seven or eight hours painstakingly creating a great CV. It’s a lot of work but it will pay off when employers invite you for an interview. Most people require a CV in reverse chronological order (an employer will be very familiar with that format), but for interim managers, contractors and NEDs, other frameworks might be necessary.

Alternatively, use a professional CV writing company.

Let’s face it; we live in a world where we outsource many things to those who are better qualified than ourselves, for example:

• plumbers

• electricians

• gardeners

• tree surgeons

• web designers

• marketing consultants

• accountants

• lawyers

• car mechanics

• hairdressers

The list goes on.

Even on the smallest scale, most new companies would invest in having a website professionally designed; this is because it is their prime piece of marketing collateral and needs to be spot-on if they are to win customers.

It’s the same as a CV; it is YOUR prime piece of marketing collateral and if it isn’t spot on, you won’t generate interviews for the different jobs you are applying for.

Not everyone knows why a CV is important?

I mention this having done a CV clinic at a career fair in Sheffield. Hundreds of young professionals and graduates attended. They'd invested thousands of pounds and up to four years in gaining a degree. This was their first contact with potential employers and service providers after graduating.

People queued up at our stand to receive a free appraisal of their CV. I was encouraged to think that these young professionals were serious about giving themselves the best chance of securing a foot on the career ladder.

But as I spoke to people, my positivity turned to concern over the price that some of these job seekers were placing on their CV (and subsequently their career).

I found it difficult to understand how any young, career minded person could walk into the careers fair with a laptop, top of the range headphones, mobile phone and designer clothes (the list goes on), but they would feel negative about paying a couple of hundred quid to have their CV professionally written.

Those that did invest in our services got great results; those that didn’t may well still be struggling to secure a job that is aligned with their degree studies.

The importance of a well written, good CV

On further investigation, it wasn't to do with the value they placed on the amount of work that we would do to provide them with a new CV; they just didn't understand how important a good CV is.

This has been real food for thought for our organisation and we have shifted our focus to explaining the benefits of having a CV professionally written rather than trying to sell ourselves as a company.

My message to the next generation of Richard Branson’s is very simple.

A good CV is your ticket to your career with your potential employer.

Yes, it's your marketing tool! You are destined to spend eight, nine, if not ten hours a day in your job. Make a resounding impact on your prospective employer with a CV that gets the employer's attention.

Your CV should shine the best light on you compared to the other applicants and help you get to the next stage of the application process, not the other candidates.

So, my advice is to invest in your CV so that you can secure a job that you enjoy, one that will enrich your life rather than leaving you feeling depressed and miserable; the alternative in the current economic climate is not a positive one!!

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