4 TIPS FOR CREATING A CV THAT STANDS OUT

Late last year, I was contacted by Amy who was actively looking for a role for over a year without much success. She had 9 years of experience with the last 3 in Singapore working with a very small accounting firm handling SME accounts.

While she had worked for leading MNCs in her home country, she was unable to crack that market here in Singapore. When she became pregnant she decided to take a break for a year however, it extended to 2 years as she wasn’t getting any response. Her CV was not compliant with ATS and was more of a list of responsibilities.

Amy is a fantastic finance professional who had written her career story in a way that was doing her a massive disservice. Once we could uncover all the impact she had made in her roles, we re-designed her CV. Within 2 months, she got a role with a Fortune 100 company at a level that did justice to her experience. She also ended up with a much higher salary.

The majority of jobseekers get stuck in the cycle of applying to numerous roles without getting a reply – even the rejection email is an automated response.

So, how can you catch the eye of a potential recruiter/ employer rather than a cursory glance (if that happens at all)? Here are 4 tips to work with:

1. Understand how ATS works

In 2018, Jobscan (a web service that lets jobseekers scan their resume for ATS optimization) did a major study that revealed that 98.8% of Fortune 500 companies use Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Love it or hate it, ATS is here to stay. ATS is all about keywords and formatting. If you don’t meet some of the requirements in these areas, your CV will not reach a human. When you start writing your CV, identify the keywords in 5-6 job descriptions for the roles you are interested in. Use them strategically throughout your CV.

For formatting, keep it simple! Seriously, ATS is like Sheldon Cooper from BBT. Everything should be as it is supposed to be. You move away a bit from what is expected in it’s requirements and it goes crazy. You can pass the ATS (as well as the tired human eye) in the formatting area through the following tips:

• Respect white spaces and margins. Well, this one is for recruiters who look at 100s of applications every day. Too cramped-up and wordy resumes are hard on the eye.
• No designer templates. It doesn’t work for the ATS and in most cases, doesn’t work for the recruiter as they expect a particular structure of information presentation. Some critical information can fall through the cracks reducing your chances of being shortlisted. Avoid text boxes, columns, tables, and headers/footers. You may try designer templates, depending on the industry you are targeting, if you are sending a pdf version of your CV directly to the hiring manager but don’t go overboard.
• Add a bit of color to please the eye as well as to highlight sections. Stick with one additional color apart from black to err on the side of caution. I love using blue for section headers, company, and role title to give a bit of variety.

2. Differentiation and quantification are the silver bullet.

When I was a recruiter, I used to struggle in getting interested in applicants’ CVs. Most CVs for a particular role looked like a big list of responsibilities. If I changed the names of the jobseekers and the companies they worked for, it was pretty much like looking at the same CV.

Your CV is not an autobiography talking about what all you did. It has to be a differentiator where you can showcase how you have highlighted value to the company. And numbers work like magic. My recruiter-trained eyes immediately zoom in on the numbers in a CV. If you are not in a revenue-generating function or finance-related field, you can still dig out numbers by going a level deeper for your contributions.

3. Start strong and make an instant impact

Have you heard of a resume headline? It is what differentiates you from everyone in your function and is best put right under the Executive Summary section. This will include patterns in your experience which is your secret sauce compared to everyone else in your function. See the example below:

Another critical aspect your Executive Summary has to establish is to make sure that if the recruiter just glances at this section and a couple of achievements, they know what you bring to the table.

Start each sentence with a powerful action verb. The recruiter-glance stays slightly longer on the first couple of lines and the first few words of every sentence. Make sure you are making these the most impactful.

“Start each sentence with a powerful action verb”

4. A word about Additional Information

Talk about relevant technical skills and languages. Avoid writing information that can screen you out – your birthday, marital status, age etc.

For experienced professionals, we can skip ‘Interests’ section (keep these for your LinkedIn About section and Interview.) For graduating students, only put interests that leave a lasting impression. The global hobbies/interests are traveling, reading, and sports. They are worth mentioning in the CV only if you have a clear story that differentiates you from the majority of applicants.

Hopefully, these tips serve as good starting points to make your CV stand out from other applicants while still playing safe with the rules.

What are some of the other tips which make a CV great?

JobS-ME: Job Search Made Easy is a training, coaching and consulting company helping professionals get their next ideal job fast. True to its name, JobS-ME was launched to make job-search easy and effective.