In an ongoing tough recruitment market your CV is still the one document that recruiters and employers will use to make those all important decisions about whether your capabilities and skills make you a great bet to bring you in for an interview. Rightly or wrongly, this outdated mode of presenting yourself and your case for suitability for employment (with the advance of technology and online tools, we’re still concerned with Word documents?) is still the most important thing you can spend time on in the job hunting process. Yet still we’re hearing the horror stories of job seekers parting with much needed cash for a service which, in effect, takes control and responsibility away from you in the most important aspect of getting a new job; the CV creation.
Just last week a currently unemployed Project Manager was talking to me about the frustrations he felt when looking for a new position; “The last time I was out of work about 6 or 7 years ago, I had job interview opportunities coming out of my ears. This time around, out of 70 or 80 applications I’ve had three interviews from two different companies but no job offers”. He went on to tell me about the steps he’s been taking: “Now I’m just applying for anything with the title ‘Project Manager’ in the hope that as I increase the number of applications I make there are greater odds in gaining an interview.” With this new plan of attack he has also paid £400 for someone to re-write his CV.
There are two things wrong with this approach; blanket applying for jobs based on job title with a CV written by someone else; this Project Manager has got to the point where he is no longer in control of his job searching and when it doesn’t work he now has someone else to blame.
So why do people use CV writing services? Many people find it difficult to write about themselves or find the etiquette of CV writing confusing or frustrating. It is also difficult to know how to write about your career in a way which is clear, concise, compelling and in some cases, accurate [one in three applicants lie in their CV (Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors [CIEA] Feb, 2009)]. There appears to be two main issues people struggle with: Firstly, it is about a subject matter they are too close to. It is difficult to write about themselves and at the same time write about themselves in a successful, high-achieving way. Secondly, it is a writing style that requires effort and a little practice: For example, the use of encapsulating words like “structured methodologies”, rather than a long list of every process, method and guidance ever used in your career. CV writing is a true skill, and one which many people don’t think is worth investing the time and effort when money can be easily thrown at the issue to fix it.
And therein lies the dilemma: Can a CV really be outsourced to an external party and the output really and truly reflect that individuals career, achievements and experience in the best possible way? CVs are personal documents, and unfortunately, professional CVs come across strongly as impersonal and too generic. A professional CV writer misses the subtleties of an individual’s career, especially when the writer has little understanding of the subject’s trade. Project management is a complex role with many core competencies, capabilities and skills, and these coupled with the industry sector knowledge means there is much to capture and highlight in a professional project manager’s CV. All this information is the real “stuff” that makes a project manager tick, and ultimately what makes them a potentially attractive employee or contractor to a hiring organisation. With a generic and impersonal outsourced CV which implies rather than being explicit, it is easy to see why some people are overlooked whilst others are being asked in for interviews.
The other piece of advice I’ve been giving to seekers recently is the need to tailor your CV to each individual role which brings us back to the Project Manager featured above and how his system is doomed to fail. Project management professionals that are invited into interviews are doing three things in their job hunting; applying for the relevant job (do you have 90% of what the company is looking for in the job specification or advert?), tailoring their CV to that job (highlighting the relevant points, moving their key achievements to make relevant ones more prominent, changing wording or terminology etc) and professionalising their approach (with cover letters carefully constructed to catch the eye and hold attention). With a blanket approach to applying for roles the opportunity is lost to personalise and tailor and with a paid for CV it makes it much more difficult to fine-tune for individual roles.
So how can you become a professional job seeker?
- Use a sounding board, preferably a good friend or agent*. Use a friend or colleague to read through your CV and ask for honest, constructive criticism. If your friend does not work within project management, would the content of the CV make sense to them? Can they understand what you do, how you do it and how good you are? If a friend doesn’t understand, you can be assured that some readers of your CV will also struggle. Remember: not all HR professionals or department heads know what a project manager does, so you are potentially writing your CV to a wide audience. Better still, use a trusted agent. Good agents will be able to mentor or coach you on what hiring organisations are looking for in a good project manager CV. They can also advise on the do’s and don’ts and be particularly useful at letting you know what a successful candidate is doing right with their CV.
- Get into the mindset of thinking of the CV as sales material. Ultimately the CV is there to sell you as a first choice project manager (or programme manager, project office etc) to the hiring manager. Think of the job specification as a tender for work – what is the job outline asking for? Your CV should clearly convey and sell your skills, capabilities, competencies and experience in relation to that tender for work.
- Research for a good template and advice on the basics of CV writing. Arras People Careers Advice has a template and CV advice document especially written for project professionals.
Finally, if you are now feeling ready to tackle your CV again, here is a little exercise which we use to take project management professionals through their CV in the careers clinics. You might find the questions obvious but for many people it is a moment of clarity. View your CV and answer these questions honestly:
- Does your work experience cover your key skills and experience across the entire project lifecycle? Have you covered experience and skills in planning, for example? Do you cover initiation and your role, in say, business case development?
- Does your CV cover the behavioural competencies of your role? For example, do you cover communication in an explicit way or is just implied? Do you cover team management, resource management, conflict management in any obvious way?
- Do you actually cover the core competencies of project management? Are there details that cover areas like stakeholder management, estimating, scope management, quality, scheduling, risk management, change control, etc?
- Is your CV guilty of giving too much detail about the projects you have worked on rather than the way you as a successful project manager have delivered them? Remember your next role may be completely unconnected to the previous projects you’ve worked on therefore will a new hiring manager really be that interested in the technical aspects and jargon-littered details?
*Arras People have a sounding board service available through their Project Management Careers Clinics. See here for more details.
Today’s post is reprinted from the July issue of Project Management Tipoffs, the project management & recruitment issues newsletter from Arras People. Sign up now for free issues to be delivered each month straight to your inbox!
