How To Construct A CV – And Secure The First Interview: Part 1

Part 1: Overall Impression.

The Daily Mail had an article last week ‘revealing’ that currently a third of Britons want to change careers. Now, whether you believe this press release from Chrysalis Courses, (training courses for careers in hypnotherapy, psychotherapy and counselling…) to be a piece of in-depth, rigorous cross-sector research or not, the PR market certainly is buoyant right now. Lots of people who stayed put during the recession are dusting off their CVs and making enquiries. Great news for me, good news for the economy.



When I interview candidates, they nearly always ask me for suggestions to improve CVs. CV writing is an art, and there’s certainly more to it than can be covered in a single article. So how about three?



In this first piece, I’m going to give you a few tips about the overall impression of the CV – format size, font etc. Then in a further two articles, we’ll look at how the content comes together, what to include and what not to include.



But bear in mind that there is no such thing as the perfect CV. There are various ways to approach it, which work for different reasons for different clients. Your CV will ideally be tailored by a good recruiter to suit each client, as each client will naturally be looking for different things. What should also be noted is that CVs in direct application to a job and CVs from recruiters are received by clients in slightly different ways, with different expectations before they are even opened. So you might want to have two versions for your CV. The guide below is for submitting a CV via a recruiter.



Overall Impression

1. Two Pages Good: Your CV serves as your first impression. But it also gets read very quickly. Most MDs will scan-read the CVs that land on their desks (due to volume). They’ll be looking for experience that matches the brief, so this needs to shout from the page. It’s also the reason that your CV needs to be two pages. A third page will never get read. Be concise, be relevant, make every word count. Just like a press release, the first couple of paragraphs need to seal the deal (which in this case, is securing the first interview) – so those paragraphs need to be relevant experience and results.



2. Keep It Simple: For similar reasons, your CV must scan-read easily. You can’t fight it, so at least make it easier for the MD to scan-read, they’ll appreciate it. Don’t clutter it up, don’t put in photos or fancy pictures – black and white and straight forward is best. Even is you’re going for a ‘creative’ role, let the experience speak for itself, don’t try and push this through fancy design. Any pictures are irrelevant and a waste of space, save them for your coverage book. This is PR after all – you’re demonstrating your skill at delivering a concise, targeted message.



3. Word Document: Pdf does look professional, but have a Word copy too. Your recruiter may need to make tweaks to the CV at the last minute – impossible with a read-only pdf, and copy/paste does not work well between the programmes.



4. Fonts: Use the same font throughout, with maybe one or two size variations for headings and sub-headings and make use of bold, underline and italic to differentiate sections (but again, keep it simple, and don’t go over the top, make sure it still flows). Use normal bullet points, not fancy ones. Not only is this unnecessary decoration, it may not load on some computers. Use a smart, easy to read font. As a tip, Tahoma and Verdana are the only fonts guaranteed to display properly on both PC and Mac. Just remember, if your CV is hard to open, the client may not bother trying. Sans serif fonts are a good idea, otherwise it can look a little too formal – but that is a personal choice.

Now those are the basics covered, in the next post we’ll look at deciding how to structure the content on the CV – how to catch attention and also make the information flow well throughout. In the third post, we’ll look at the finer details of content. Keep watching this space…

PR Is Third Fastest Sector For Rising Job Demand.

Employment Agency Reed recently gained coverage yesterday on the BBC with news that it has recorded a rise of 1% in job vacancies over April compared with March (although the BBC has actually got the date wrong in their article). Its statement was based on its own, newly created employment index, The Reed Job Index, where data is apparently taken from their own job board figures, recording monthly advertised jobs from 8,000 recruiters across 37 career sectors throughout the UK.



Generally, the impression it gives is mixed, with a positive 1% rise tempered by 4.2% decline in average wages, although its important to remember that this is across 37 sectors.



The figures were in fact released before the general election on 5th May 2010 (presumably as a Q1 report), prompting Martin Warnes, Managing Director of Reed.co.uk, to suggest



"… the Index figures offer more signs of nervousness than confidence at the moment…Employers seem to be waiting to see the outcome of the General Election, so they can factor the result into their forward plans for jobs."



It will therefore be interesting to see how their new index performs over the quarter post-election.



However, the BBC reported that, according to Reed, job demand rose most in the charity and voluntary sectors, followed by marketing, public relations, legal and secretarial. So while, as Warnes suggests, the overall impression in the jobs market is of uncertainty, the silver lining for PR people is that they seem to be in demand to allay that uncertainty, and the rise in marketing jobs suggests that recovering businesses are putting money into self promotion again.



All good news for PR.