"Here's a copy of my CV," a client I coach recently said with a nervous giggle. "It's not much." And she was right: it wasn't much. In fact, it was downright bad. The only interesting question is, if my client felt this way about her CV, why did she write it in this manner in the first place?
Curriculum Vitae (CV) literally means the course of your life. A resume, as a CV is commonly called in the USA, means summary. Regardless of how you call it -- although internationally CV is the preferred title -- a CV highlights your professional experience and achievements. If you submit it with the mindset, "It's not much," you've already lost the game. And if you write your CV with that attitude --"damn this is boring!" or "I don't know what to say!" -- your lack of passion concerning the course of your own professional life will be reflected in it. You will successfully sell yourself as "boring." Congratulations!
Ineffective CVs start in the mind and the soul. If you think you are not special or have nothing unique to offer an employee, who the hell will want to hire you? Keep in mind that companies, depending on their size, receive up to 800 job applications for a single position. And the competition is fierce: the best and the brightest from around the globe. Moreover, the typical manager or HR officer -- over-worked, under pressure, running several projects simultaneously -- has about 45 seconds or so to scan your CV. The dull, the mediocre, the badly structured are quickly filtered out. Think about it: you submit the course of your life, the honors won, the responsibilities held, the targets reached, and nobody has the time to read your life's story in detail -- unless your CV is different, interesting and highlights your special skills and talents.
Unfortunately, the vast amount of CVs fail in this. Characteristics of ineffective CVs include:
- One-size-fits-all: creating just one CV that you submit to all positions ranging from potato-peeler to NASA engineer. You should have from five to seven variations of your CV, so that you can precisely target the position and the company you want.
Your CV is your life. A bad CV is like not washing your hair for a month: instantly noticeable and utterly revolting. Forming such an impression in the minds of managers and HR officials is, I'm sure you'll agree, not conducive to finding your dream-job.