Some thoughts from Caroline Forman, one of our team of Career Coaches. Caroline is based in the North of England and covers the area around York and Leeds.
It has been brought to my slightly shocked attention recently that in house recruiters now only spend on average about 10 seconds reading your CV. 10 seconds. Not that long really is it?
In fact here’s a little exercise for you. Open up your most current CV & read it properly for 10 seconds. My guess is that you will have got to about 2/3 down the first page.
Now have a think about what you have learnt about yourself in those 10 seconds. If the timescale above is to be believed then this is the information a recruiter will use to decide if you should be interviewed for a job or not.
If you think about a job you have applied for recently & were rejected after application, does the exercise above highlight why they might not have chosen you to interview?
Although I agree it’s not that easy to grab a recruiter’s attention in 10 seconds I really believe there are some actions you can take have much more success.
So what should it say?
My advice is to think about the following:
- Include an objective – a focused summary of what you are looking for now & make sure this is relevant to the job you have applied for.
- Follow that with a personal profile – a few concise sentences about you as a unique individual & what personal attributes you could bring to a role.
- Then summarise your 5 key skills using bullet points & give concise evidence to show where you have used these to achieve great results in your previous experience.
I would also strongly recommend reviewing these each time you send your CV for a job as you can see it makes the most sense to tailor this information to the job advert & the skills they are asking for.
Remember 10 seconds is not long. Be concise but relevant. You want to encourage a recruiter to see your suitability for a role in that time. Or encourage them to read on & see what other amazing things you have done that they want to find out more about.
In a world where a recession & online recruitment means that there are approx. 500 applications for every role, it’s got to be worth taking some time & a focused approach to stand out from the crowd hasn’t it?”