How to get the job you want #4
Upgrade your pitch deck. (yes your cv)
If you define the word ‘escape’ it either means: ‘a form of temporary distraction from reality or routine’, or it could mean ‘an act of breaking free from confinement or control’. What type of escape do you want and which are you on track to create for yourself?
“Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re probably right.” — Henry Ford.
The surest way to fail in your escape is to want the latter and yet settle for the former. Be bold. Take risks. If you find yourself being steered back into your box it could be because you’ve continued to draw the same old lines on your cv expecting different results. Job hunting is a completely backwards system; approaching new opportunities with material that supports the same old person you have been in the past. Are we in The Upside Down?
Flip the lens and paint a picture of how your past positions you to help the organisation succeed in the future. You are telling a story — both about what you’ve done but also who you have the potential to become. Selling yourself to-date is your cv’s job, it is designed to get you the interview. Selling your potential is your job once you have a captive audience.
So that makes cv writing an art, or even a science. A crappy cv is as bad as a limp handshake that slides slowly into contact, like a gentle, wet potato.
(And yes, if you ask me about the future of the cv, I’d have once shouted ‘burn the bugger!’ Now I think a good one can actually open doors and can even be fun to make. If you want a prediction — videos are the future, but we’ll work with what we’ve got for now.)
So, back to basics.
- Start again completely.
Don’t even look at your old CV when you try again. It doesn’t matter how good you thought it was before, if it is older than 2 years, redo it.
2. Pay attention to your formatting.
Friends, make sure it is legible and attractive. This means using white space, good font size/style, bullets and breaks. Add colour, your LinkedIn profile, a hyperlink to your blog. Use the Hemmingway editor app to get your wording just right. Check out Grammarly, an incredible tool for correcting your grammar. If you’re not naturally visual, get a friend to look over it. Show it to people and get feedback. Muhammad Ali doesn’t go into the ring without warming up.
Golden formatting rules:
- Always bullet point your achievements, long sentences are hard to read. I’m after a synopsis not the whole novel.
- Include facts, figures and supporting evidence where you can — this needs to be relevant to the role requirements.
- Break up the text with different sized fonts, titles and page breaks.
- Consider using 1/3 page layouts.
- Two pages max.
- Use visual aids only if it suits your personality/the role you are applying to.
Tip: Experiment with free cv builder tools and see how impactful you can make it, such as Visual CV. OR my new favourite: Enhancv.
Check out this self promotion package made by a designer for inspiration. OR you can even look at my cv. Yes, yes you can.
3. Don’t be afraid to ask.
Stick a sentence on your linked in, or in your personal profile that says what you want from your next role. This makes it easy for whoever is looking to gauge your motivations, interests and suitability. Our job here is to make it easy for them to phone you with roles you’d actually want to hear about/the job you applied to.
4. Make it relevant — This is the MOST important part.
Based it completely around the specific job/company you have in front of you. Don’t put in anything frivolous that doesn’t add to your case. Your task is to do one thing: get them to call you. Your CV is your hook not your entire history.
How? 5 easy steps:
Step 1: Isolate the key skills that the company is looking for and sell yourself on those specific skills. If you are changing career this is still possible, as a lot of roles require generic skills which you can tease out from your broader experience. Look outside your job description and recall what happened in your day-to-day and use those successes to show why you make a good match. Reflect the same language back that is used on the advert, but make sure it is a true account of your skills.
Ease up on adding super old stuff, unless it is relevant and instead condense it into a simple list with dates. Your last 3–5 years are the only bits we need in more detail.
Step 2: Consider the organisation. If you are applying to a social organisation then you might have room for a longer bio, links to volunteer work you have done, testimonials from people you have worked with. If you are applying to work in data-analysis for a tech startup you might want to present facts and figures about conversion rates, engagement metrics or P&L.
Step 3: Add a sentence at the end of each employment segment to describe (tweet-sized) your biggest achievement in that organisation. Make it quantifiable: ‘grew the team from 6 to 16 in 8 months which lifted our overall revenue by X% YOY’ or ‘delivered x% new business, which was 85% above target for the year and the highest the company had ever seen’. Choose an example that is directly related to the vision for the role you are applying to, say what it is and then what was the result of that achievement — why should we care?
Simple, concise, relevant.
Step 4: Write one sentence about the company you’ve worked for, so the hiring manager knows who they are, what do they do and what their mission is. We also want to see a section on your key skills, ability with technical programmes/software etc. And only put languages on there if you are at a conversational, basic German isn’t much to anyone let’s be real.
Step 5: Test it out. Apply to one or two roles with your new cv, making sure that you change it for each role you apply to. They could be roles you are interested in but are perhaps not in your top 3, and see how you do. Did you get an interview? You can do this even if you are not actively looking for work. It is a great way to stay on top of your game.
5. Experiment with ownership.
This is your job search. Phone the hiring manager to ask how they are getting on and whats been missing from applications so far. Send in a video. Update your Linkedin. Print your cv and go and meet the team. Invite someone you admire from the company out for coffee. Research them and find two new excellent business connections and offer to make an introduction. Do the work first, demonstrate value and invite them to meet you at your level. If they don’t, no sweat. You know you tried your very best and that’s what matters.
6. Follow up
Just phone them. No, they won’t mind. If they don’t want to talk to you then do you want to work there? If they can’t get back due to volume then dust yourself off and move on. Remember, you are in charge. This is your energy, your life, your skill set and your move. Take back ownership of your role, get front and centre, then get feedback.
If you missed article 1: how to get direction in your job hunt start → here.
If you want to recap on article 2: how to decide what you want → go here.
After that, look at article 3: how to make yourself attractive → here.
Thank you for reading.
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Stay in touch and connect with me here.
In London at Escape The City.
If you have any thoughts, would like me to answer specific job-hunting questions or even review your cv, hit me up on Linkedin or tweet me @mellyndaniamh.
