Create the best Curriculum Vitae for your next marketing job - a transcript from the video.
Intro:
A potential employer will give your CV three seconds – will yours get you the interview?
Best CV Guide
Introduction
Producing the ideal CV is a very subjective issue.
Whilst there’s no right and wrong answer there are some simple rules that will help you to produce a document that is both functional and interesting.
Always remember that your CV is the most critical document in your search for a job, far more important than the covering letter.
It is the first opportunity for a potential employer to get to know you. First impressions count so it needs to be great!
Let’s start with the basics.
The likelihood is that if you are watching this you will be in marketing or wanting to get in to it. As specialists in marketing recruitment and personally having over 18 years of finding people their next dream job in marketing, we’re in a pretty good position to advise you what catches our eye and more importantly, what will catch your prospective employers eye.
Before you launch in with the keyboard, spend a bit of time planning.
You’ll need to consider these 5 elements when putting your CV together
It’s not dissimilar to putting together a typical marketing campaign – the only difference being that the product or service is YOU!
Audience
As with any marketing campaign you need to know who your audience is. And you need to speak to them in terms that will get your message across succinctly and in a compelling fashion.
In most instances it will be the recruiting manager – the person you will be reporting in to so you’ve got to be hitting those ‘buy’ buttons.
However there are still some companies in which Personnel have the responsibility for the first sift so you also need to appeal to their requirements.
If a line manager is reading your CV he or she will want to see recent and relevant work experience. If Personnel have responsibility they may be using a scoring process whereby you will have to state different marketing and management skills on the CV to be considered. For each you have to make sure the information they need is easily understandable and logically presented.
Structure
So – let’s talk about the structure of the CV – what goes where?
The structure to a cv can be very simple.
We’re not trying to confuse the reader so try and make it as simple as possible.
Some candidates send me through CV’s with that edge of creativity – that’s fine…but, if your creativity means that the reader can’t find the information they are looking for then you’ve shot yourself in the foot.
Let’s take a look at the following headers as a structure for the document
Content
So – let’s take these in the order we’re going to lay them out on the CV
In Personal Details we’re putting in there the contact details that potential employers will use to contact you.
We’re expecting to see here
Double check this information folks so you know it’s right. You’d be amazed how many CV’s I have seen with incorrect mobile numbers or email addresses. It kind of makes it a bit difficult for us to get hold of you if these things are wrong!
Let’s move on to the Education part of the CV.
Here we’re looking for most recent and most relevant. I’ll use that phrase a lot – it’s one that applies to every aspect of your CV. What I mean by this is that we don’t need to see every GCSE you got 15 years ago with the respective grade next to it. We need the most recent qualifications relevant to the role you are applying for – likely to be a degree or continuing professional development. Work from current day back and try to format the information so that you fit each qualification on just one line.
Once you have completed this we should be about half way down the first page. If you’re already at the bottom of the first page then go back and edit, reduce type face or do something to condense what you are saying. You should have loads of exciting stuff to put on your CV, all of this so far is just admin!
Let’s move on to the main part of the CV – Your Experience.
There are loads of different views on how to explain your experience on a cv. Again – we firmly believe that ‘what is most recent is most relevant’ so start your Experience section with your most recent role.
It’s critical that this section is completely fluid with no confusion. Confusion over dates or where you have worked will raise doubts in an employers mind and this will either reduce your chances of getting an interview or worse still, make some direct questions very awkward in the interview itself!
So – make life easy for yourself and get this bit right. For example:
Employer : Network Marketing
Position : Recruitment Consultant
Dates : 6/98 to Present
Don’t assume that a future employer knows who your current company is. Help them out. Put a brief one line summary of the organisation, it’s size, something interesting to give the reader some context to the next bit of information you give them – what you do.
Discuss your experience in summary form rather than writing full paragraphs of text. We’d typically be looking for an explanation of your day to day activities starting with the big picture or strategic things if you are involved at that level and then work down to some of the detail.
Again, avoid writing loads here that won’t be of interest. Have a think about the audience and what they are looking for in their next member of staff. More often than not, in marketing, most candidates have experience relevant for the role but because their experience can often be quite diverse they get missed off the shortlist because others have more specifically relevant information on the CV. Don’t let yourself be in the same boat.
Additional Information
Round off the CV with a couple of lines explaining your personal interests/hobbies. These are important as they may demonstrate how you could fit into a close knit marketing team.
General Guidance
Length
In an ideal world a CV should be approximately 2 pages. Any recruiter with a pile of CV’s to look through will initially glance at the first couple of pages of each CV to find proof that the candidate has the relevant skills. Any information that forces the CV to be longer than two pages should be about your interests and activities or additional skills not covered in the main body of the CV.
Presentation
Choose a clear type face/font
Make effective use of bold, itallics, underline but don’t overcomplicate the document. Create some depth to the CV so that it is engaging to read.Be consistent throughout.
Remember that the CV will most likely be viewed in an email so use a well recognised package such as word. Avoid complicated formatting that could get mangled in an email server.
Salary and Benefits package, unless requested in the advert you have applied for can be left until the actual interview.
There is no need to put references on – these will be requested and followed up once an offer is made.
Final Checks
Read your CV carefully checking spelling and punctuation. Ask a third party to check it, they will probably spot errors that you don’t. A common area for mistakes is dates.
Do a final check on layout.
Try emailing the document to yourself to check that it prints in the required format.
We know that you will get many different suggestions as to the best way to write a CV however sticking to this basic plan will give you a document that ensures, if you have the right experience the client will see it in your CV
Good Luck.
