See yourself in the third person

[Badshah Mamun]

See yourself in the third person
By Jim Bright

Several readers this week have sent me their CVs with the nervous inquiry: "Is it all right?" Sadly, in all the cases I looked at, they were not even close to all right and this is fairly standard.

The common fault in every case was a spectacular failure to get any alternative perspective into their documents. For most people, their day-to-day writing is confined to offering personal perspectives on things in emails and letters.

They express their feelings, their opinions, their demands and objections. What seems to happen when they turn their attentions to CV writing is they fail to appreciate the personal perspective is not what is required.

CV writing can be a difficult intellectual exercise because for it to be successful, the writer needs to be able to have an out-of-body experience. They need to see their CV as other people see it and not through their own eyes.

To be successful, the CV writer needs to be able to get inside the head of the recruiter as much as possible. In other words, they need to have a clear idea of what the recruiter will be looking for.

Generally the best place to start is to research the job you are applying for in incredible detail. My acid test is that you are able to talk through exactly what you would be doing in that job every hour of a typical day.

Then you need to understand what other things recruiters look for.

This is more difficult and can sometimes come down to personal peccadillos but as a general rule you won't go too far wrong if you consider things such as relevant career experience and/or qualifications, evidence of honesty, reliability, popularity or at least affability, flexibility and openness to new ideas or ways of doing things.

This may all sound like common sense ? and much of it is ? but it is a lot harder to achieve than it sounds. For instance, one of the CVs started with an address given as a PO Box.

To the applicant this may seem fine and may even be appropriate, given their personal mail arrangements. However, to a recruiter this may seem odd and could provoke all sorts of speculation about the permanence of the address or the reasons for the relative anonymity.

Another CV listed two pages of short courses that ranged from first aid to technical skills training. The question arises: what's the point?

It is highly unlikely that every one of these courses is going to be directly relevant to the job. If the applicant is trying to convey that they look to engage in regular professional development, they could simply say just that, list the total number of courses and perhaps give a couple of examples.

For instance, why list a manual-handling skills course when applying for an IT role? In all but a few roles, this will not be relevant.

Another CV I saw was one page that captured roles dating back 30 years as short summaries of duties.

There were no achievements listed, no education or skills and no sense of what the person is looking for in a new role.

In other words, it was saying "this is me, take me or leave me" and in a tight labour market, the answer to that invitation is sadly predictable.

A well-written CV answers rather than raises questions in a recruiter's mind. To do that well, you need to get another perspective ? that of the recruiter.

Source: http://content.mycareer.com.au/advice-research/resume/put-yourself-third-person.aspx