Designing a successful CV in 2019
It’s 2019. Where’s my flying car?
As Chief of Operations at HR Innovate, I deal with everything from ensuring there is fresh coffee to drink to setting up automated systems to improve processes and flow of information. 2019 is here and Smart technology has taken over every aspect of our lives, from our cars to our TVs. The Internet of Things is here and it’s not going anywhere except — well — all around.
You have the school, you have the skills and you want a job.
Step 1. You need a CV.
Form or Function?
One of the first questions to ask in any design is Form or Function? It can be a trying question at times, but in this case the answer is function — full stop. The key to your success will be designing your CV to have the highest success rate in navigating technology. This means that a computer needs to be able to read it and pull the critical information out and upload it to a database on the first try without human intervention.
If your CV isn’t able to do that, then, it sits in a queue with the others waiting for an administrator to upload it.
In the meantime, the CVs that do successfully auto parse are waiting to be read when the recruiters log in to their systems in the morning.
Design Tips
No one wants a paper CV. You found the next great job fair at Hilton Park or wherever. Determined to get a job you go to the local kiosk and print out a hundred copies of your four-page CV and put each one in a professional plastic binder. After that, you may choose to determine the direction of the job fair by using the current position of the sun. lol just kidding.
One page is good The recruiter at the job fair can quickly see your education level and skills.
Be proactive. Ask your recruiter for an email where you can send your details, then send your CV. Immediately. Doing so will get your name and skills into their database.
Format your CV in a .doc file. With a variety of technologies, a .doc will have the highest success rate from a database point of view. .pdf is lower on the scale and .jpg is basically garbage.
Do not put your information in text boxes. They just get in the way.
Clearly list your contact information. Name, city, country, mobile, number, email address, website or Linkedin. Place it on the top. It is not obvious where you live. Also if you have special country work permits add that too.
Identify your skill set. “All” is not a skill. Your skill set is a quick way for potential employers and recruiters to sort CVs. No one puts the word “all” into a filter search. Think about keywords that you want to jump to the top of the list on in a database filter search. Maybe you want to be in the top results for “ACCA” or maybe its “.net”. [An interesting aside here is that when you have a skill with variable spelling like C# (C#, C #, Csharp, C Sharp) you need to implement a strategy. Maybe select the most commonly used term, which by the way is: CSharp].
Want to be in our database? Upload your CV here.
Bottom Line
When designing your CV make sure you think about how a computer will suck the important information out and push it to a database. I’m not saying that it shouldn’t be cool or pretty, but I suggest using fonts (type, size and color) for this aspect.
p.s. I’m not sitting around watching video resumes all day, so just don’t.
