Quick Tips:How To Get That Job Interview Call You Have Been Waiting For.

I was opportuned to be at an event recently where I met a man who had applied for jobs about 500 times to no avail. He had sent his CV to about 500 companies and yet remained out of job. Is it that there are truly no jobs or his representation of his CV is not just worth an interview?

The first impression a Hiring manager gets of you as a potential candidate is all in your CV.  On the average about 500 people apply for a single role. Research shows that it takes about 6 seconds for a hiring manager to decide whether or not to continue reading your CV! How then can your CV ace this attention span?

Think of your presentation. How easy is it to read is your CV? Does your CV give the hiring manager a tough time to eye ball the most vital information? Is your formatting uniform? Are there spelling errors or unnecessary use of bullets and bold formats? Did you attach a picture to your CV like it is a Jamb form? Do you have multiple font types on the document making you look confused? Are your educational qualifications arranged in order of recency or just disorganized?

Writing a CV is not a ‘one size fits all’. You must tailor the CV to the job you are applying for. You cannot send the same CV for a Marketing job to an Employer who is looking for a logistics manager. It will not work.

The area of work experience is one of the most important sections of a CV. This is the part where the Hiring Manager gets a sense of how you have used your time at the Organizations you have worked with and the values you have contributed. Employers do not pay for the degrees or qualifications you have, they pay you for the value you can contribute and the worth you can add to the company.

Too many people make the mistake of the just listing out the responsibilities they were given without an explanation of their accomplishments while at it. If you say you are a teacher and your responsibilities were preparing lesson notes and syllabuses, what exactly makes you stand out from any other teacher who does the same? Did the performance of the students improve as a result of your notes and teaching style? By what percentage or grade was this improvement? Values! Values! Values! Think about how what you do makes an impact on the clients/ customers of the company and the company as a whole. This is what the Hiring Manager wants to see.

Another off putting factor to consider is instability or time gaps in CVs. Are you the type of candidate that hops from one job to another after a few months? Do you have unaccounted for time gaps in your CV where the space between two jobs is over a year? No hiring manager wants to go through the stress of finding a candidate that will be employed only to run away after a few months.

Trainings and certifications are a great ad on to CVs. Outside of your academic qualifications what are you doing to improve yourself generally or in line with your career path?

Try and infuse some of these tips in your next application and you would have sold your skills to the Employer and improved your chances of being called for an interview which is the end goal of a CV!