Recruiters and hiring managers often receive hundreds of CVs for one position only one CV can be successful. That’s why your CV Has 7 Seconds to get a recruiter’s attention.
Here are 5 tips that will help your CV stand out.
1. Make sure your email address is professional.
Imagine the look on the recruiter’s face reading your email address: [email protected] (The email address is not real). First impressions are important and email is one of the most common forms of communication with your potential employer. If you’re trying to build a professional brand, you might want to start with creating a professional e-mail address.
2. List Your Relevant Work Experience.
How to format the resume work experience section: job title, company, and city then timeframe of your employment there. Lastly, you will have to state the key responsibilities. Don’t just list every single task you did in your job history. Focus on the few duties most relevant that helped you evolve.
3. Write your key achievements
Key Achievement is often overlooked and not always mentioned in the CV or resume. However, they are very important for the recruiter to read in your CV. Employers know what you did, but they need to know how well you did. Don’t forget that any achievement is still an achievement, no matter how small you think it is; people grow and learn differently. If you are a shy, introvert person, scared of public speaking, being able to hold a presentation in front of the management or another team in the company, is progress, an achievement.
4. List your skills.
If you’re not sure what your skills are, your first step is to identify them. You gain skills from life experiences, such as paid and unpaid jobs, interests, hobbies, playing a sport, belonging to organizations or schools. Besides the soft skills, employers may be looking for specific skills, and recruiters may search for keywords in databases. Be specific when you list your technical skills. For example Expert knowledge of SQL or Good knowledge of Excel.
5. Write your personal goals.
This part is not essential but it can differentiate a good CV from an excellent CV. Writing about your personal professional goals will show that you are a stable person that has a clear outline of the career direction. It’s a quick summary of where you’ve been so far in your career and also where you want to go with the company you are applying to. This says „ I don’t desperately need the job, I want the job because it fits in my career picture for the next 5 years”.
Here are some CV examples :
