Why use a professional CV writer?
Why use a professional CV writer?
Most self-written CVs focus on the functions of the role and miss out on the achievements.
Every job has an outcome, otherwise it wouldn’t be a job.
Example: A football goalkeepers job is to prevent the opposition from scoring goals.
If you are hiring a goalkeeper, you would want to know how good they are at saving goals.
An effective CV for a goalkeeper would therefore focus on the save to goal attempt ratio as being the best way to gauge their success.
They could also rank themselves against other goalkeepers in their league and cite examples of key saves.
Or
A salesperson is measured by the amount of sales they achieve against their target.
If you are hiring a salesperson, you would want to know if they are any good at selling, so would want to know their achievement versus their target.
Many jobs have more than one measurable outcome. In order to understand what exactly your current role’s key objectives are, it is likely to be the things that you are measured on in your annual appraisal (if you have one).
The skill of a professional CV writer is to gather all this information from you, on top of what is already on your CV, and then to craft the information into a meaningful, impactful document.
One of the key parts of your CV is the short professional summary at the top. This is your personal elevator pitch, where you have an opportunity to tell the reader who you are, what you do, and what you can do for them. This short professional summary should be around 2 – 3 sentences long be targeted to the role you seek.
The summary at the top of your CV is one of the most read parts of your CV so it is crucial to get this right. You should keep it;
Concise
Impactful
Relevant
Use words with positive connotations
Highlight the ‘why you’ for the role you are applying for
Be a summary of all that follows in the CV
In our experience, most self-written CVs fail to include a powerful and impactful professional summary – and yet this is one of the most crucial parts of the CV.
Research has shown that recruiters spend about 6 – 7 seconds reading a CV. It’s not long – but it’s long enough for them to screen the CV in or out.
So you don’t have much time to get them to choose you.
On top of the 6 – 7 seconds, researchers have tracked recruiters eyes when reading a CV and it’s generally in an F shape – with the top bar of the F receiving the most eyeball time as the eyes go back and forth across the page to understand what you’ve done.
They are reading the summary and other key information such as location.
This supports our experience that the top third of the first page of your CV is the most important – it should be concise but content rich.
From the summary, key skills, education and your current role, the reader will typically have decided yes or no.
Hence why it is so important to ensure the summary is as relevant and punchy as possible to get the reader to mentally agree to progress your application – once they’ve done that, they will typically scan the rest of the CV to support that decision.
If they haven’t decided to interview you by the time they scroll down your CV, your chances of being progressed start to fall.
Every job has an outcome, otherwise it wouldn’t be a job.
Example: A football goalkeepers job is to prevent the opposition from scoring goals.
If you are hiring a goalkeeper, you would want to know how good they are at saving goals.
An effective CV for a goalkeeper would therefore focus on the save to goal attempt ratio as being the best way to gauge their success.
They could also rank themselves against other goalkeepers in their league and cite examples of key saves.
Or
A salesperson is measured by the amount of sales they achieve against their target.
If you are hiring a salesperson, you would want to know if they are any good at selling, so would want to know their achievement versus their target.
Many jobs have more than one measurable outcome. In order to understand what exactly your current role’s key objectives are, it is likely to be the things that you are measured on in your annual appraisal (if you have one).
The skill of a professional CV writer is to gather all this information from you, on top of what is already on your CV, and then to craft the information into a meaningful, impactful document.
One of the key parts of your CV is the short professional summary at the top. This is your personal elevator pitch, where you have an opportunity to tell the reader who you are, what you do, and what you can do for them. This short professional summary should be around 2 – 3 sentences long be targeted to the role you seek.
The summary at the top of your CV is one of the most read parts of your CV so it is crucial to get this right. You should keep it;
Concise
Impactful
Relevant
Use words with positive connotations
Highlight the ‘why you’ for the role you are applying for
Be a summary of all that follows in the CV
In our experience, most self-written CVs fail to include a powerful and impactful professional summary – and yet this is one of the most crucial parts of the CV.
Research has shown that recruiters spend about 6 – 7 seconds reading a CV. It’s not long – but it’s long enough for them to screen the CV in or out.
So you don’t have much time to get them to choose you.
On top of the 6 – 7 seconds, researchers have tracked recruiters eyes when reading a CV and it’s generally in an F shape – with the top bar of the F receiving the most eyeball time as the eyes go back and forth across the page to understand what you’ve done.
They are reading the summary and other key information such as location.
This supports our experience that the top third of the first page of your CV is the most important – it should be concise but content rich.
From the summary, key skills, education and your current role, the reader will typically have decided yes or no.
Hence why it is so important to ensure the summary is as relevant and punchy as possible to get the reader to mentally agree to progress your application – once they’ve done that, they will typically scan the rest of the CV to support that decision.
If they haven’t decided to interview you by the time they scroll down your CV, your chances of being progressed start to fall.