Timeless Tips to Make Your CV Stand Out to Recruiters
The way resumes (aka CVs) are written has changed tremendously over the past decade—you can no longer have an uninteresting profile that runs into several pages and yet fails to grab a potential recruiter’s attention. While you’ll find a hundred different opinions online on how to make your CV stand out among a horde of other applicants’, the following tips have been curated from timeless advice from leading recruitment experts across industries.
Make it succinct yet impactful
It is indeed important to list your accomplishments and professional experience on your CV; however, your professional profile need not be an endless narration of irrelevant details. What counts for a headhunter most is if a candidate has the relevant experience and skill set—so each time you apply to a job, tweak your resume to highlight experience and skills that match the job profile.
If you don’t have a natural flair for business writing, consider hiring a professional CV writer to write a concise yet powerful resume describing your credentials and professional achievements.
Contact leading industry recruiters directly
In today’s competitive environment, it does not suffice to merely post your resume on a job site and wait for recruiters to contact you. Those who land great jobs have often gone the proverbial extra mile to connect with leading recruitment consultants in their industry niche. Conventional job sites are inundated with tens of thousands of profiles similar to yours, and headhunters find it increasingly daunting to go through each and every profile their search throws up. So, do some research and reach out to recruitment firms as well as HR divisions of companies you’d love to work with.
Make friends with CV distribution
The above method of surpassing the job sites and contacting leading recruiters directly has its advantages, but it’ also a time-taking process that requires patience and ongoing commitment. How about if someone offered to do it all for you—that is, manually match your profile with the top recruitment companies and distribute your CV to a set of handpicked recruiters best suited to your profile. All you need to do is to keep tab of the agencies your CV was sent to and follow up with each individually.
A relatively new concept, CV Distribution is a disruptive new way for jobseekers to connect with leading hiring firms without having to contact each one separately. It has emerged as a much-needed bridge between jobseekers and recruitment consultancies hunting for exceptional candidates for their clients.
Stop shying away from professional networking
If every unemployed professional took half the time they spend on social media and used it for professional networking instead, they can significantly increase their chances of landing the right job. Indeed, spending an hour every day on LinkedIn may not be your ticket to a dream job, but it can certainly empower you with valuable insight into your industry and its influencers and what skills you need to develop to stand out to potential recruiters. Clearly, there’s nothing to lose from being active in a professional network, virtual or offline.