If you are looking for a job right now, then you have most likely seen articles and blogs all about how you should tailor your CV for every job you apply for. This piece of advice is golden as unfortunately, a CV is not a ‘one size fits all’.
Making sure that you are highlighting the specific skills that the recruiter is looking for by putting them on your CV shows that you are who they are looking for.
This does, however, require some work on your part as you must go through the job advert then make changes to your CV accordingly.
You most likely will have the skills they are looking for but what is important is making that known and obvious to the recruiter. They do not want to read between the lines to figure out which skills you have.
Make sure they are bold and showcase who you are professionally and personally.
So, how exactly do you tailor your CV for each application? We have some tips to help you demonstrate to each recruiter that you are the perfect person for the role!
Read and re-read the job description so that you know exactly what they are looking for. You can even highlight or note down the specific skills and experiences that are in the description.
This means that when it comes to altering your CV you will know exactly what to include and what to remove.
Many recruiters use software to scan CVs and applications for keywords that they included in their job descriptions. To save yours from being discarded or ignored then you should be including all the keywords and phrases that they will be looking for.
You may be applying for a role in an industry that you have little experience in.
In this case, you want to use the experiences that you do have to highlight the skills you took from that role that are relevant to the job you are applying for.
Soft skills that relate to how you work and transferrable skills that can be applied to many roles are key here. You want to include as many as you can that are relevant as it will show the recruiter that you have the skills they are looking for, just within a different experience.
This could be in a previous working role, a volunteering role, or even whilst in education.
You need to demonstrate that your experiences have helped you to develop the skills that they are looking for as this is what will help you to stand out next to those who have relevant experience.
To save recruiters from searching through your list of experiences, make sure that the most relevant information on your CV is visible. When a recruiter puts out a job advert, they may have a lot of applications to go through.
This means that you only have a few seconds to impress.
By making sure that all of your relevant skills and experiences are seen and stand out, you can be sure that they will be made aware of who you are and what you can do. This may mean that you need to re-order your CV.
Re-ordering your CV when applying for a role means that you can showcase yourself professionally.
A top tip here, however, is to make sure that you keep a logical order to your CV. This is because it can easily look unorganised if the years are not in order or there are large gaps in your experiences.
Be logical but also demonstrate what you can do to impress.
Reading the job description is of course important, however, you also will want to read up about the company, their culture, and values.
This is because you will want to demonstrate that you will be a good fit within the business.
You can do this by including skills or experiences that will be appealing to them based on what you know about the company. For example, if part of the company culture is giving back to the community, and you have experience volunteering, this is perfect to highlight on your CV as it will allow them to see that you want to give back too.
A CV is only a short document.
You want to be sure that all the information on there shows the recruiter that you are the right person for the job you’re applying for and that you will fit in with the company.
This means being selective with your experiences and qualifications. If you have enough of these to fill multiple pages, you may want to consider cutting out information that is not exactly relevant.
For example, when applying for an office manager role after having years and years worth of experiences leading up to that point, the shelf stacker role you had as a teenager may not make the cut.
Saying this, every experience will have given you new skills and would have contributed to who you are today. If you want to include every job you have, you have every right to do so, our tip is to reserve a line instead of a paragraph to describe it.
Remember that when applying for jobs, it is important to tailor your CV to meet the requirements of the job.
This will help you to get noticed and will showcase why you should be hired over others.
By following these tips, you will stand out by helping the recruiters to notice the exact skills and experiences you have that make you the right person for the job. For tips on job applications, interviews, and much more then why not check out our blog? We are bursting with tips and advice for you!
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