Your CV Is Not A Work History – It’s Your National Advertising Campaign

Think about it. Your CV is your first impression. And we all know about first impressions. Fail here and all other preparation you make will be in vain. They will never get to see your bubbling motivation, hear your tales of glory or be inspired by your unquenchable enthusiasm. Your CV has to be the strongest it can be. And that means learning the structures and techniques of successful, professional CVs. If not, you are seriously jeopardising your future and failing to fulfil your potential for the sake of a short investment of time.

Creating your CV

To do a really professional job is not that easy, unless you’ve had plenty of practice. If you don’t want to leave it to chance, you would do well to consider the services of a professional. There’s plenty around and, as with any industry, they are of varying quality and cost. Here are some of the more fundamental issues you should address.

* Sell Benefits, Substantiate With Features

One of the first things that was drummed into us in my consultancy days was the difference between features and benefits. Features are essentially assets, facts and figures. Benefits are the same thing expressed in terms of the WIIFM factor (what’s in it for me). When you apply to a vacancy, you need to express your work experience in terms of benefits to your target employer. There are various words you can use to bring your benefits to life, called “benefit -generators”. Example benefit-generators are:

Enhance, Improve, Enable, Maximise, Minimise, Facilitate, Manage

* Proof

Another thing they said was “everything can be reduced to numbers”. It may not be a universal phrase, but on the whole, there is a great deal of truth in it. Think about your own job. How many tasks do you perform each day? How many times? How long does each take? How much are you paid for doing them? What, then, is the cost per task? What is your output per day? By how much has it changed over the months? Whatever you do, you can always apply a figure to it one way or another.

So what? Well, once you determine how to measure what it is you do, you can keep records of it. Then you can track your efforts over time, measure improvements and – guess what? – put them on your CV to prove how effective you are.
– “Saved £10k per annum” reads better than “gave a cost saving”.
– “Brought in 50k of new business” is more defined than “improved sales in 2 areas”.
– “Increased output by 5%” is more informative than “helped increase production”.

You get the idea. In this way, employers get a real, tangible picture of just how valuable you really are.

* Keep It Relevant

Following on from the features and benefits point, you should clearly look to exclude from your CV anything that doesn’t have direct relevance to your target employer. Writing your definitive life history is a sure fire way to bore them silly. They haven’t got the time or the patience to sift through everything you have to say about yourself whilst looking for the good bits. Remember the WIIFM factor and tell them what they want to hear. Your CV should be as short and as punchy as possible, with as many words as is necessary to sell yourself, but not one more. Let me just repeat that last bit:

Your CV should include as many words as is necessary to sell yourself, but not one more

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