First Professional CV Writers Question

As the owner of a recruitment business that also offers professional job seeker service, including professional CV Writing, I learn a lot from working on both sides of the recruitment market place.

With my recruitment hat on, my first question to any job applicant for any of our jobs is: Why do you see this as your next ideal job?

Question two is then the ideal headhunters question.

When we are asked to review CV"s, or provide a CV writing service, then my first question is similar: What is it that you want to do next?

Most often, the prospective CV Writing client will answer with one of two options:

• "Well, is not that obvious?"


• "Well, I"d like to consider" and then they list everything possible under the sun

The reason that any good Professional CV Writer should ask you this question, is that while good CV Writing can be more effective in any job search, if you do not know what you want to do, then how can better writing ever make that more effective?

CV Writing and recruitment from the employers view point

With the plethora of jobs boards in the world, we may think that there are more jobs out there, but right now we know economically that the number of permanent jobs is both low and highly competitive. But are we right to assume that the process of recruitment has changed behind all of this technology?

Ah, no! The basics still come down to the job applicant matching both the technical requirements of the job description, which they will respond to in its reduced form of the job advert. Secondly, matching the dual requirements of the Hiring Manager, and the company in the form of the Human Resources department.

Make of it what you will, but many of the high-tech tools are now deployed in recruitment are simply ways of processing volumes of job applicants in a quick manner: not better sausage making, just more sausages.

The problem with many of these tools and technologies is that they simply separate the job applicant from the company, and make the whole process more sterile. In doing so there is a price to pay for both the company (do they get all the great job applicants), and the job applicant: you only have a 10% chance of employment of getting an advertised job via a jobs board.

But the basics of recruitment still come down to this: people employ people. Remember that, and think about what the hiring manager wants to hear on the far side of the table, and you make quicker progress.

Does your CV Writing confirm that you manage your career?

So what does the employing company want to hear from a suitable job applicant? The first issue to recognize is that the Hiring Manager and the HR team have two diverse but similar requirements.

Hiring Managers focuses on your ability to do the job: do you have the right technical skills – what the HR manager would call competencies – to do the job? These are summarized as a combination of applied skills, qualifications and experiences. Secondly, they want to know that you will get on with them and their team: social fit.

The HR manager will have different questions. You will be in the interview room because firstly they do not have the right person inside the company, who can be trained up to do the job in the defined time scale. Talent management is still the first role of the HR team, much as though Health & Safety now take up a lot of their business agenda. Secondly, they know that recruitment is an expensive business: it will cost at least twice the annual salary over the first year in additional costs to bring a new hire up to speed. So they want someone who will stay for at least two years.

How do HR managers and professionals test for that? They ask you about career management in the simplest way possible: Why do you see this as your next ideal job? Which is most often followed-up by: And where do you see your career progressing?

Does your Professional CV throw a blank or aim like an arrow?

So why does the First Professional CV Writers question need to be "What is it that you want to do next?"

Good job application is about building a positive and growing story through your job application, around you and both your capabilities to technically do the job, and to socially fit in with that company.

So if you know what you want to do, that makes selecting you above all the other job applicants easy, right? But if you do not know what you want to do, and write something which covers all the possible jobs that you could do, you will either end up with something which either is too long, or does not answer that employers CV Sifting questions in sufficient volume to get you into the Telephone Interview pile.

The result often of many self-written CV"s presence – around two thirds from my own experience and many surveys – is that they include every experience that the job applicant has ever had, and never focus on what they want to do next. They mention nice words like loyal and good at time keeping, but never mention useful employer things like "I really want to be an X because."

Here is the CV Writing trade, its called chucking a blanket. The CV does not focus on the why you can do that job, it focus on the you and requests the employee to both find and extract the relevant stuff for their particular job. I"m sorry, but even in the pre-recessionary times, there were just far too many good job applicants for this to work, while now it just gets you immediately revised.

Answer the question, do not pose employment problems in your Professional CV

The reason that many job applications get returned, is not that the job applicant is not enough to do the job, but that they pose too many unanswered questions for the employer reading that CV.

The answer to the first Professional CV Writers question "What is it that you want to do next," creates a clearer and more focused CV, and hence a greater chance of a telephone interview.

If you are experiencing high rates of job application, and few or now telephone interviews – less than 1 interview per 10 job applications – its time to get some help from a Professional CV Writer.

Good Luck!

First Professional CV Writers Question