The Brutal Truth: Your CV is boring

Congratulations, you made it through an automated application system, jumping through hoops like a performing seal. Your CV is now sat in front of a hiring manager and they have done the requisite 30 second scan of job titles and length of service to determine you are a potential candidate. Let me say now that this is targeted at those roles that go straight to a hiring manager within a company. They do not apply to 99% of the recruiters or agencies out there who specialise in recruiting for a specific sector; remember they are specialists in seeing your skill set. Therefore this applies mainly to those roles being recruited directly by hiring managers.

But The Brutal Truth: Your CV is boring.

I don’t mean uninteresting, I mean damn boring. Too often people view a CV in the incorrect way; it is not a record of achievement, it is a sales pitch. It is the first impression you make. One old adage from before the internet automated processes, was the use of coloured paper for your CV. That way, it stood out in a pile of white paper and often caught more attention than other CV’s did. To this day, this rings true. Not that I am saying to make your CV bright blue or similar, as we still need to read it, but believe me when I say that in a sea of black and white, even just your name in colour stands out. Except blue. Everyone uses blue, having seemingly gone no further in their exploration of Microsoft Word than the standard templates and colour schemes. If you can, try and match brand colours or style/font when applying, as that really will help you excel and shows you have done some research in to them! And yes, it damn well stands out as I have to look at your CV for a few seconds more to work out if I am still on CV’s or stumbled in to a new training memo.

The use of colour and images however causes a dilemma. Most automated systems are only ‘okay’ at reading documents. That is because your CV is broken down to code and scanned, rather than being viewed with a human perspective. Images and clever formatting can throw this off. The software is usually just looking for keywords; Look for words that describe measurable traits in the job description and work those in to your CV for a better chance of jumping through this hoop.

The reason for this? Because job descriptions are often used to make the job advert; they already contain the key words used to measure performance in the role. Employers use those in filtering CVs because it is easier than making a new list and needing to rewrite the job description. This is why so many CVs are advised to be plain, easy to read documents, but it doesn’t need to be as boring as a government guidance document. And on formatting: never, and I mean never, use Comic Sans or any handwritten style font – they are difficult to read, and frankly horrid to look at.

Many managers don’t care for descriptive paragraphs. In honesty, bullet points are usually all we have time to read. We can question you deeper through interview, but we need to understand two key things from your CV – will you be a fit to the role, and what is your experience?

Achievements are great and I don’t want to belittle anyone here, but no-one really cares that you won a silver medal in 2004 for swimming at school. Well, YOU do, but most hiring managers don’t. We care about what you did for the company. If you can bolster the teams performance we are more likely to hire you. Just tell us what you achieved; how is less relevant at this stage, but we need business-critical points. Leave out the three mentions you had on TripAdvisor for excellent service. But if this made you the most credited employee for good service for two years running, we need to know. In simple terms – sell yourself.

Not forgetting my personal favourite – hobbies. If you don’t have any, don’t list any, simple. As a polite-as-possible reminder, everyone likes reading, writing, watching movies and socialising with friends. These hobbies are just you saying you can listen, read, write and hold a conversation. We see them listed every day. If however you enjoy origami or astrophotography then put that in; it’s something that can spark curiosity. If you have writing as a hobby like I do, tell us what you write or blog about, not just that you write. And parents, sorry to say, but as much as you may love spending time with your twins Chardonnay and Tequila, that is not a hobby. It’s being a parent.

Scan your own CV in thirty seconds and see if it sells you. If not, time for a rewrite!

Next time – The Brutal Truth: Your CV is not Instagram!