10 Tips To Make Your CV Stand Out

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Just in case you don’t know, employers receive thousands of applications for a single job vacancy posted. This means that for you to gain the employers attention, you must make your resume stand out. The bad news is that most people don’t have the right CV to make an impression. The cool thing is that you can learn to make your CV stand out from others.

Companies generally look to find the right candidates in a short time as possible. They try to look for someone with adequate experience, skills, and qualifications, and they try to achieve all these within the shortest possible time. This has made even qualified graduates to miss out interview calls due to their CV structure.

So how do you make your resume stand out? How do you grab the hiring manager’s attention?

Let see the tips to make your resume stand out below;

1. Use of Keywords

Hiring Managers often concentrate on keywords while sourcing CVs from a pool of resumes. Make your CV keywords savvy, instead of using general languages. Employing the use of too many technical words or too general languages will make your CV practically invincible to the employer. Instead, you should look to adding specific keywords to your resume to increase your chances of standing out.

N.B: No recruiter takes the pain of viewing every CV one after the other.

2. Tailor it to the Job

I don’t really mean you should lie! But you should adopt each CV for any job you are applying for. You can do that by removing job descriptions that are not in line with the job you are applying for or removing work experiences that don’t count.

3. Follow Specific Requirement on the Job Advert

Most times going against job requirements can be your greatest undoing. Most job Ads might read “not more than 2 years’ experience”, and it would be bad to have more than that on your resume. Some job adverts might ask you to include some certain points. If that be the case, then you should do it.

4. Use a Nice Email

The best email format might be the combination of your first name and last name. The use of “underscores”, “hyphens”, “full-stops” might not be favorable to a HR in a hurry.

In most cases, there might be an error in the spelling, and you might end up not getting an invite that was originally sent to you.

5. Use Power Words

It is advised that you list your achievements and not the responsibilities you carried out. When describing your accomplishments, you should try and use power words. These are those words that demonstrate your abilities. E.g. includes: advised, upgraded, increased, managed, influenced, etc.

6. Learn to use numbers

In addition to the use of power words, employing numbers makes more sense in a CV than giving out vague words. If for example, you were able to close deals as a marketer, you should write something like;

“I was able to close 6 business deals within 4 months”

Putting numbers on your accomplishments show how relevant you are to the position you are applying for.

7. Format your CV the Right Way

This is one of the biggest mistake job seekers make. Hiring managers have just 5 seconds to make an impression on your CV; therefore your format should be just perfect. Just like a blog post, you should make the recruiter have all information about you without stress. Some tips to help you with this include;

- Simple fonts
- Aligned texts
- Avoid large paragraph of texts
- Employ the consistent use of bullet points (they are less distracting)
- Have a unique career summary

8. Have a Profile

Just very few people have profiles on their resume. To stand out, you need to place a brief profile at the top of your resume. It should bear your strengths, abilities and skills. The profile could be a simple sentence like “An all-around software developer, proficient in Java, C++, C# languages”

It gives a clue of who you are already.

9. Proof Read

Nothing decreases the worth of a job seeker like grammatical errors. Read your resume out loud. You should check out for factual errors, gaps, and how it sounds to the human brain. Reading it out loud will help you detect errors fast and efficient.

10. Make the CV as concise as possible

The rule of writing a CV is to keep it simple and structured. Having a length CV with lots of pages is a huge turn-off to hiring managers. If you’ve already gotten lots of work experience which makes it difficult to keep your CV simple, then you should turn over to a professional for help.

These are the basic steps to make your CV stand out. Remember that there is nothing worse to a recruiter as bad grammar and spelling mistakes. Always remember to tailor your CV to the job, Proof-read, and follow-up on the Organization.

 

Source: PatrickOkunima.com