What the bleep is going on with your resume?!

What is going on with resumes?!  I’m literally disparing over the length and quality.

Newsflash....your CV is actually less about you and more about me (or any other poor recruiter who has to read it).

When did 6+ pages become the norm?  Whatever happened to brevity and being succinct, articulate, outcome focussed?

And sin of all sins – when did a list verbatim of your job description become impressive?  It’s not. 

Here are 7 tips to revolutionise your CV – they may seem basic, but you’ll be amazed how quickly they are forgotten or not used:

1.       All current and correct contact details front and centre on the first page (and no cover page - please!).

2.       Think about your audience – and structure the order of your information in line with the requirements of the role.  If this means changing your CV for every job you apply for, THEN DO IT!  There have been many candidates who have lost out on a job when they had the skills and experience but the information relating to this was buried on page five of their CV and the recruiter gave up before then.

3.       Have one ‘master’ document that includes all information – then edit and cut for each job you apply to.  Carefully think about the relevance of the information you are including – does your interest in cooking have anything to do with your competency in engineering?  Your interest in rebuilding cars may be however, if you are a Mechanical Fitter.

4.       This same rule applies to courses – DO NOT list every course you have ever attended if it has absolutely no relevance to the position you are applying for.

5.       Say what you have to say in five or less pages.  I challenge you!  I actually suggest you can achieve this in three pages or less, but let’s start slow.

6.       DO NOT LIST personal qualities.  Nothing irritates a recruiter more than reading a shopping list of supposed attributes.  Not that we think you are lying, but consider if everyone includes “hard working”, “team player”, “organised”, “great initiative” – it effectively means nothing and tells us nothing.  Even worse, those who cite “attention to detail” and their CV has spelling and grammatical errors.

7.       And here is the golden rule; include achievements.  I want to see specific measures or outcomes that tell me what type of impact you might have in my vacancy.  Here’s an example of one from my resume under the position title of Recruitment Manager:

In FY08: function recruited 1078 positions (59% above anticipated budget), with average time to fill of 49 days and cost per placement less than $3k.

See how the above line immediately communicates to the reader the size of the function I managed, including measures around budgeted numbers, costs and time to fill.

Make no mistake – your CV is about marketing.  It’s your 30 second advert during prime time television.  That’s how long you have to capture me, to sell your features and benefits to suit my needs.  If you don’t, I’ll switch off and grab a cuppa.