Chris Potter
Developing your CV
An exceptional Curriculum Vitae is an essential tool for any professional who is intent on realising their true career ambitions. It acts as a showreel, documenting everything that you have achieved to date, and presenting these achievements as tangible benefits in their best light to a prospective employer. A good CV will also contribute more than just the sum of its parts, creating a sense of personality and character about its author, which can sometimes really tip the balance in your favour for roles where a cultural fit is important.
Given the importance of a good CV as a professional's main calling card to the employment world, it is surprising how few good ones are actually in circulation. This is largely due to the relative difficulty that people experience when writing about themselves, the need to be objective and concise, and the lack of understanding of the things that employers really value.
Essentially, a CV is an instrument designed specifically to get you an interview for a job. Like any instrument, there are good ones and bad ones, so below are a few tips on how to make your CV create the right impression, and give your future career an edge.
The basics
The general rule of thumb with any CV, regardless of the seniority or experience of its author, is that the content should be contained within two pages, and never more than three. For many people, this will involve some succinct editing, but then a successful CV is a masterwork of brevity because it is designed solely to get you to interview stage; you can fill in the detail during the interview itself.
Make sure that you provide your full name and contact details at the top of the document, so that businesses or recruitment consultancies can contact you easily and quickly if required.
What do employers want to see?
In a great many cases, candidates develop their CV's without first thinking what an employer would like to see. One thing to bear in mind is that your CV will almost certainly be viewed alongside multiple CV's from other candidates. Because prospective employers have to sift through a series of CV's to arrive at their shortlist, it pays to communicate your skills and experience in a concise manner, using a basic format that allows the information to be understood and digested easily.
A good CV can be undone by poor presentation, spelling, typos or grammar, so keep it simple and always triple check that there are no glaring errors that might detract from your CV's professional impact, Always get someone else to read it for you as a double check.
Profile yourself
This is the one area within the document where you get to create an overall, personal impression of what your skills and experience could mean to an employer. Try and highlight your overall strengths and key skills areas, such as creativity, organisational skills or management ability in a fluent and engaging manner. You will have the opportunity to evidence your particular work and educational experiences later, so use your profile section to condense what the overall benefits of your recruitment would mean to an employer. Short and punchy - if you've got exceptional client handling skills, are a great team player with excellent attention to detail, here is your opportunity to say it.
Professional qualifications & skills
Create a short list of all your professional qualifications, including any relevant courses you have attended. In today's technologically oriented world, it's also a good idea to state your knowledge of IT systems and computer packages, as well as any foreign languages you speak with an estimation as to your level of fluency.
Education
Depending on the amount of career experience that you need to highlight later, you can add or subtract detail from your educational history (such as omitting your GCSE subjects, for example), whilst still leaving the essential elements. Start with the most recent qualifications and work backwards, remembering to include all your qualifications, with grades and dates. Your educational resume will give potential employers the opportunity to evaluate the path you took before embarking on your career, although many employers count solid work experience as equally valid (if not more so) on a good CV.
Employment history
Start with your current or most recent job. State the name of the company and the nature of its business. State your job title, explain what your core role is, and then concisely describe your responsibilities, duties and main achievements.Bullet points are best for this.If you have extensive experience, keep your earlier jobs brief - it is generally your most recent role that the interviewer will be most interested in. After this, state any other roles or relevant professional engagements in the same format, although with a gradually diminishing level of detail as you discuss some of the earlier jobs you have had.
Generally speaking, interviewers and prospective employers don't like to see gaps within a candidate's CV, so if you have taken time out - for example to travel, or to bring up children - make sure that you represent this period, along with a stated reason.A one liner will suffice at this stage, but the time should be accounted for.
Interests & hobbies
Writing a short list or paragraph about your interests and hobbies is unlikely to be the decisive aspect in a prospective employer's decision-making, although an insight into what you do outside of work is never a bad thing. As with the Profile section, this area tells an interviewer a bit more about your personality, and about how you as a person might fit into their company culture, which will certainly affect their judgements on your CV as a whole.
References or referees
Very often an employer will seek final reassurance as to a prospective candidate's suitability by seeking a reference or two. As an essential part of the evaluation process, you should either provide the details of at least two referees or state that 'References are available upon request', if you would rather detail these later.
Different CVs for different roles
Very rarely will a single, static CV be uniformly effective across multiple job applications, so it pays to tailor your CV to each individual role if you are to give yourself the optimum chance for success. Remember to ask yourself what the specific employer would want to see from a candidate for this role, and then prioritise and shape your CV (whilst still keeping the essential core components accurate) in order to present yourself as a suitable candidate for the role.
Addendums
Having a separate addendum is a great way to carry additional information while not over-burdening your actual CV - for example a separate list of projects, with relevant detail can show an employer additional information to illustrate more fully your experience.
Giving your interviews a winning edge
As well as an opportunity for an employer to learn more about your experience, the interview is the key time when you can demonstrate your true calibre as a candidate by the type of questions you ask.
A candidate with no questions could really cloud an employer's estimation of their interest and ability to engage. Or, perhaps worse still would be a candidate who asks the wrong questions, for example:
- "Questions? No, you've answered them already."
- "What does your company do?"
- "What's your company's website address?"
- "What's the holiday allowance?"
- "How long do I get for lunch?"
- "How much overtime would I have to work?"
Showing that you've done your research at this stage is key - so rather than asking who their main competitors are, do your research before and ask more informed questions - "I notice that one of your main competitors is entering the North American market, are you considering this too?"
In contrast to the 'don'ts', these following questions would tell you the candidate is genuinely interested in becoming part of the team and has done their research into the position and the company:
- "Knowing my qualifications and experience, do you have questions or concerns about my ability to perform the job?"
- " If I were to be the successful applicant, what are the top 3 priorities you would like to see me accomplish and how quickly?"
- "What does your company value most highly? How do you think my work could help further these values?"
- "Your company released a new product last month that hasn't received great press. What has the internal reaction been to this?"
And these questions will tell you the candidate has mapped out a career path and is highly motivated to follow it:
- "How would you describe your corporate culture?"
- "Would you say from what you've seen so far that we would be a good fit for each other?"
- "How important is the function of this position to upper management?"
- "What is your company's plan for the next five years and how does my position fit?"
- "What provisions are there for ongoing training and further skills acquisition?"
- "What career progression within the organisation would you say this job entails? "
- "How will my performance be measured and by whom?"
- "When top performers leave, what are the main reasons given?"
Thoughtful questions such as these emphasise that the candidate is taking as active a role as the employer in the job selection process.They demonstrate resourcefulness, motivation, intelligence, knowledge, qualifications and engagement.
Above all, they show that the candidate knows how to make informed decisions, a sought-after skill for any job.
Giving your interviews a winning edge
As well as an opportunity for an employer to learn more about your experience, the interview is the key time when you can demonstrate your true calibre as a candidate by the type of questions you ask.
A candidate with no questions could really cloud an employer's estimation of their interest and ability to engage. Or, perhaps worse still would be a candidate who asks the wrong questions, for example:
- "Questions? No, you've answered them already."
- "What does your company do?"
- "What's your company's website address?"
- "What's the holiday allowance?"
- "How long do I get for lunch?"
- "How much overtime would I have to work?"
Showing that you've done your research at this stage is key - so rather than asking who their main competitors are, do your research before and ask more informed questions - "I notice that one of your main competitors is entering the North American market, are you considering this too?"
In contrast to the 'don'ts', these following questions would tell you the candidate is genuinely interested in becoming part of the team and has done their research into the position and the company:
- "Knowing my qualifications and experience, do you have questions or concerns about my ability to perform the job?"
- " If I were to be the successful applicant, what are the top 3 priorities you would like to see me accomplish and how quickly?"
- "What does your company value most highly? How do you think my work could help further these values?"
- "Your company released a new product last month that hasn't received great press. What has the internal reaction been to this?"
And these questions will tell you the candidate has mapped out a career path and is highly motivated to follow it:
- "How would you describe your corporate culture?"
- "Would you say from what you've seen so far that we would be a good fit for each other?"
- "How important is the function of this position to upper management?"
- "What is your company's plan for the next five years and how does my position fit?"
- "What provisions are there for ongoing training and further skills acquisition?"
- "What career progression within the organisation would you say this job entails? "
- "How will my performance be measured and by whom?"
- "When top performers leave, what are the main reasons given?"
Thoughtful questions such as these emphasise that the candidate is taking as active a role as the employer in the job selection process.They demonstrate resourcefulness, motivation, intelligence, knowledge, qualifications and engagement.
Above all, they show that the candidate knows how to make informed decisions, a sought-after skill for any job.
Increasing motivation in the workplace
Within the present economic climate, the need to positively motivate both yourself and your fellow professionals has rarely been more relevant. For a business to perform well, even within adverse trading conditions, it requires employees who are prepared to go the extra mile, and for all the right reasons. A collective sense of purpose is essential to establish if you want people to get behind it.
But how does one develop career motivation, self-belief and even progression within an economic context that is nothing short of despondent? Below are some tips on how you can, and indeed should, develop a keen sense of motivation within the workplace.
Motivation is infectious
In business, as with other aspects of life, every participant has the opportunity to affect the performance and moods of others in both positive and negative ways. Just as a depressed mood within the office can start to get under the skin of even the most hardened optimist, a refreshed and motivated individual can spread an upbeat philosophy equally as well. Start trying to focus on the positive things, and you may well see your momentum carry across to fellow colleagues, who in turn may inspire you further.
Which curve are you on?
Despite the gloomy economic situation, there are still many individuals and businesses in the UK that are continuing to develop and prosper. This may be due, on a collective level, to the business operating in relatively unharmed sectors, such as energy, education or pharma. On a more personal level however, it can also be the case that the business is surviving because the teams and individuals involved are highly motivated and intent on bucking the trend.
Human resources are often the most valuable assets of any company, so look at the bigger picture and realise that the only way to deal with times such as these is for everyone to be highly charged and focused towards common goals.
Visualise, then actualise
Whether you are trying to motivate yourself, another individual or even a whole team, the key initial step is to develop a vision within your own mind of the preferred outcomes and the actions required in order to achieve them. Only once your objectives and methodology have been fully developed can you hope to inspire and motivate both yourself and others to get behind the strategy. The more clearly you can communicate this vision, the more actively your colleagues can successfully implement it.
Individuals need different goals
Although most people respond to similar incentives and motivational triggers within the professional environment, it is important to remember that we all also have a slight variance in our priorities. With this in mind, try and understand the motivations within yourself and others, tailoring your approach to objectives and their rewards accordingly. A clear goal is only aspirational if everyone involved can translate it into benefits that resonate to them.
Stay focused
Motivational workshops or other initiatives, both internally and externally run, are often a good idea to refocus a team and the individuals that populate it. It is worth bearing in mind however that you will need to initiate processes that serve to motivate yourself and your colleagues day in, day out, rather than experiencing around the workshops themselves. With consistent application, motivational practices can weave their way into the cultural fabric of any company
Celebrate achievements
A huge part of successful motivation, and confidence building, is the reward received when an objective is reached. Whether this be a financial bonus, taking the team out to lunch, or just a general feeling of individual and collective achievement, it needs to be celebrated. If you are
trying to build motivation, make sure that some of the initial goals are fairly easily reached, providing a 'quick win' scenario whereby everybody involved feels the satisfaction of achievement early on. This will in turn build motivation to more complex objectives, backed by the knowledge and experience of meeting objectives in the past.
Staying motivated in a changing world
The concept of motivation is, by definition, a relative one. Everybody has times when they feel more or less motivated than they have done in the past, and this can be as the result of both internal and external pressures. Being motivated is a positive state however, and it involves being able to see the opportunities, rather than the pitfalls, in everything you put your mind to. It's an easy habit to create, infinitely preferable to being de-motivated, and could open up avenues within your current and future career that you hadn't thought previously possible.
Managing your money
The flow of money, and how it is managed on both a national level by the Government and on a personal level by yourself, will be fundamental to how successful you find this coming year. The scarcity of money on a national scale will create some interesting and challenging situations at every stage within the financial spectrum, and this will require you to focus on your own finances in a way not experienced for a generation. Below are some tips on how to save money and make the most of what you have:
Don't overdo the overdraft
Over the past few years, the access to cheap credit has been plentiful and widespread, to the point where most people wouldn't think twice about dipping into their overdraft facilities if necessary. All that is changing now, and there will be more significant consequences for those who stray outside their authorised overdraft limits.
Over 2009, it will pay to rein in your spending, or at least have a conversation with your bank, if there is a risk of you slipping into unauthorised borrowing. To give you an idea of the implications, the average authorised overdraft borrowing rate is 14.8%, whilst interest charges on unauthorised borrowing are currently 60% more.
Re-energise your energy bills
Spiraling energy prices are hitting every UK household at a time when they could probably do without it. During 2008, average prices for gas and electricity rose by 48% and 28% respectively - a huge leap regardless of your personal salary levels. Naturally, this price increase is felt most particularly during the winter months, so it might be a good time to use one of the few weapons that you have against the energy price rises - the laws of competition.
There is a possibility that the government could get tough with energy companies in March, and that prices could fall by as much as 20%, although winter will have passed by then and you can still save yourself hundreds of pounds in the meantime by doing thorough research and switching tariffs or energy companies.
Mobilise your phone use
As the mobile telephone market matures and begins to plateau in the UK, largely down to the innate success of the phone companies in putting a mobile phone in the hands of virtually everyone, the game is about to change. 2009 will bring a whole range of new, largely SIM-only deals to the market, and this will be good news for the consumer.
Most people have at least one handset that they don't mind using, and the no-frills value of solely acquiring a SIM will become ever more attractive in these cash-strapped times. ASDA and IKEA have already launched their initial offerings in this field, and expect to see similar offers from all the larger retailers, allowing you to get a great deal as the price of mobile communication drops.
Clear your cards
As with the overdraft reduction, 2009 will be a good year to try and clear some of your credit card debts if you have any, or at least ensure that you begin to pay more than the minimum amount required each month. It may be hard to find the extra cash to do this, but you will be saving yourself huge amounts of money in the long term.
If you have a £2,500 debt on your cards, for example, and pay only the minimum (2%) on an interest rate of 14%, it would take 232 months (nearly 20 years) to repay the original amount, plus interest of £3826. If you paid back an extra £50 a month, the payment duration would only be 37 months (3 years) and interest of only £1,005. The difference is considerable.
Get interested in rates
The British Government is wading into historically uncharted waters with their consecutive interest rate cuts: at their current level of 1.5% they have never been so low. Whether this will actually translate into an increase in lending, and therefore the potential for business growth, remains to be seen, although it will mean good news for consumers prepared to shop around.
If you own a property, switching to a Standard Variable Rate (SVR) mortgage could potentially save you a huge amount each month, although the banks are aware of this opportunity and are making it increasingly difficult to do so through the insistence on larger deposit sums. For savers, it also pays to shop around, as a number of new, foreign owned account providers will enter the market in 2009. This will make the market more competitive and there will be relatively good deals to be had by those prepared to do their research.
Caveat Emptor
As you may have noticed over the Christmas period, retailers are becoming increasingly desperate to try and attract what disposable income you have. This has led to a bewildering variety of cut-price deals in just about every sector in retailing, meaning that you will almost certainly purchase an item for less money in 2009 than you would have paid last year.
Whilst this is of course good news, be on your guard to ensure that you are not lulled by the cheapness into spending more than you can afford, on items that you don't actually need. 2009 will be all about holding onto money, and the clearance of any debts, so don't let those discount signs distract you.
The good news (finally)
Despite all the dire predictions for the first six months of 2009, even conservative experts are claiming that towards the end of the year we may be able to see signs of a recovery.
There is every indication that the recovery will be a long one, although at least the downward curves seen in so many financial charts these days will have bottomed out and will start to pick up again.
This means that many of the financial areas that have been devalued in recent months, from the strength of the pound, to savers rates, to house prices, will start to rise. The stock exchange itself is predicted to grow by at least 10% during 2009, providing a few interesting opportunities on cheap stock. If you play your financial cards right in 2009, you will escape the worst of it and may well set yourself up for a rewarding 2010.
It is highly probable that every HR department within the UK will come under an increasing pressure to create more cost efficiencies during 2009. This will certainly make for a challenging year for HR professionals, although history has proven that these periods can often significantly develop an HR policy and expand its remit once the economy begins to pick up.
As the economist Paul Romer once said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste', and history has proven time and time again that successful businesses are not necessarily the biggest, but the ones that are most responsive to change. As the operations of HR Departments across the UK become required to deliver mitigation against the economic downturn, below is a guide to how your business might view, manage and defend its most valuable resource during 2009.
Establish your critical mass
Within every business, there is a core cost to output ratio that needs to be kept keenly balanced if the company is to remain competitive. This is true regardless of the commercial climate, but it is especially true at a time of economic uncertainty.
Within boom times, it becomes possible to take a slightly broader, more investment oriented approach to commercial objectives and the resources needed to fulfill against them, although the current situation requires an altogether more focused approach. By defining your own cost to output ratios by department, you will be able to make an accurate assessment of the critical mass of individuals needed to keep the business driven.
Defending your position from above
As someone with a responsibility for the Human Resources decisions within your company, there is a possibility that you may be required to provide a robust defence for the maintenance of HR strategy and personnel levels.
Using the critical mass approach, you can make fairly authoritative decisions about which employees are key to the company's future plans, although if you are under pressure to make changes that you don't agree with, be sure to present an alternative business case that supports your perspective. Effective HR is all about ensuring the business has all the professional support it requires to prosper, and shedding the wrong people can be a destabilizing influence on any company.
Insulate your core
Having evaluated your core human resource requirements through the prism of an economic downturn, it is imperative that the individuals whom the company considers valuable are kept happy and motivated. There is a camaraderie and focus that can develop within businesses experiencing choppy commercial waters, and this can be encouraged with the right incentives to blossom within your own company.
Ensure that you recognise, reward and continue to train your best people - it will be these people that you will need to depend on to deliver results at a time of most critical need.
Maintain a dynamic recruitment policy
As contrary as it might seem to develop an active recruitment policy during a period of mass redundancies, research has proven time and time again that effective recruitment can be a formidable foil to any downturn, and can help your company recover quicker when business picks up.
Fuelled by redundancies, the job market has become a pool of opportunity, as many talented individuals will be looking to ply their trade elsewhere. Companies with an eye on what talent is available are perfectly poised to add professionals to their teams who might actually increase your productivity levels and revenues during these difficult times.
Turning perm into temp, and vice versa
As part of your assessment into the quality and performance of employees within the business, you may see an opportunity for certain individuals to revisit the nature of their working relationship with the company. It may be expedient in the short term to revaluate and recast certain permanent roles as temporary, although your core employees will almost always be permanent.
Similarly, there may be sound economic reasons to bring a talented temporary employee in-house, perhaps creating cost efficiencies and engendering company loyalty at the same time. Performance related bonuses are a reliable way of aligning the motivation of both permanent and temporary employees with that of your company's business objectives.
Squeezing more out of less
There is little doubt that you may be called on to make more out of existing or diminishing resources within the workplace over the next 12 months or so. As the old adage suggests however, less can indeed be more, providing that you have identified the key players within your organisation that can roll their sleeves up, go the extra mile for the business, and can inspire others to also do so.
A back to basics approach, whereby a company can return to its fundamental revenue streams and look at ways of working smarter to deliver these better is no bad thing at any stage in the economic cycle. Effective organization and motivational skills are of paramount importance in order to carry the momentum of your business forward.
Catching the next wave
Commercial circumstances are always benchmarked by, and relative to, the period before them. The UK has enjoyed a period of comparative stability and prosperity for over a decade prior to the systemic banking failure of 2008, and despite Gordon Brown's pledge as Chancellor, a boom is always both preceded and followed by a period of comparative bust.
By refining the roles and business goals within your departments however, and translating these into measurable, incentivised objectives for key personnel, you can actually create a company that is more profitable, streamlined and prepared when the economy inevitably recovers. After all, what comes down must, eventually, go back up.