Whether you are focusing on preparing your first job application, or you are already looking for new opportunities in the labour market, your essential presentation card will be your CV. And, of course, the main objective of this CV would be to sell your talents effectively, which means to convince an organization that you have the technical and personal skills they are looking for.
To promote yourself as a talented professional, you will want to create a CV that stands out, so recruiters read it with interest and would want to invite you for an interview. Most recruiters and employers, however, have limited time to review the hundreds of applications they receive for a given position, so it is crucial to impress with your CV straightaway by keeping it concise, traditional, relevant, visible and interesting.
Pulling the attention of recruiters will be easier if you highlight those special features that make you unique and valuable not just per se, but for them. Doing careful research of the job postings will help you recognize what potential employers will be looking for: Key words and phrases related to specific personal qualities, competencies and technical skills relevant to the role and the industry. That will give you the best clue to create a search-friendly CV, the one that shows your skills in line with what employers are looking for.
Some recommendations you would want to follow to highlight your talents when crafting your CV are the following:
• Keep the most important at the top, it is the very first thing a recruiter will see.
• Include a core skills section to give a quick snapshot of your offering.
• Provide detail and place your most recent role first, it will be scrutinized the most.
• Avoid clichés: confident, enthusiastic, hard-working, responsible, motivated. Better examples are: to thrive on challenges, strong relationship builder, resilient, motivated by success.
• Focus on the value you have added, not just the tasks you have performed, by expressing your skills in an impactful, forceful and persuasive way. For example, instead of saying "Solved conflicts", you can write "Excellent problem solver. Strong capacity to listen, mediated between groups that reckon I truly understood both sides.”
• Use action-oriented verbs, such as: Reduced, pioneered, targeted, designed, managed, streamlined, coached, increased, systemized, transformed, organized, won, etc.
A practical example on how to apply the mentioned guidelines would be the following. Let us suppose you are a skilled sales person and you are applying to a sales executive position. You could sell your skills as a unique talent for that company in this way:
a) Write up front at the introduction of your CV: Excellent seller. Superb capacity to positively influence consumers. Improved sales in 20% the first year and in 30% the second year.
b) At the core skills section, provide powerful statements: Persuasive seller; Exceptional communicator; Outstanding multicultural awareness; Success driven professional.
c) At the professional experience section, add all your best results: Increased sales in 15% per year; Improved client satisfaction in 20% per year; 200 New accounts created over one year.
d) List your awards received: Awarded Best Company Seller in 2016 and 2017; chosen Best Employee in 2016.
e) List your trainings and certifications: 2015 Certified Seller by the International Selling Company.
Crafting a compelling CV can be hard work, but if you do proper research, write powerful and persuasive sentences and organize the information according to the requirements of the job postings, you will have created a solid document that conveys absolute confidence that you meet the needs of an employer, and that will very likely take you through to an interview.
Paula Arellano Geoffroy