Help Us Abolish The Bullet Point!

Here at Instinct we spend the majority of our days looking at CV’s.  Some are fantastic, but for others it is difficult to get past the opening paragraph.  Combined we have over 30 years recruitment experience, so we’ve read a lot of CV’s and therefore consider ourselves ‘Experts’.  Not surprisingly, even a casual look on the internet leads to the conclusion that the ‘perfect CV’ is the holy grail of job seekers: sadly many get it wrong.

So what is going so wrong?  The primary purpose of a CV is to get across your core skills however it is also the opportunity to show your personality and persuade the reader you would be a great addition to the team.  In the digital and technical arena there is much focus from our clients on past work experience.  We believe this should not be the final word on the matter and it is our role in specialist recruitment to liaise with a client and demonstrate why a job seeker is relevant for a role.

Your CV is the opening gambit in this process.  So it should first of all be succinct and clearly laid out.  There is no greater turn off for a recruiter than receiving a CV that is unclear or difficult to read: If we switch off because your CV is untidy and unclear, imagine how our clients feel!

But job-seekers, pay attention, something has happened to our world and you should be embracing it whole heartedly.  The era of the traditional dreary CV is over my friends; that’s right, you no longer need to spend hours bullet pointing how you turned around the SEO department, or how you have managed a team of wayward developers.  What we, at the front line of CV’s want to see is something new, something that makes you stand out.  Yes I know you have heard this before, but now its really true.

If we take the example of a candidate applying for a role in social media we can really see how this works.  What I don’t want to see is a tedious list of bullet pointed ‘achievements’.  Show me for example how many Twitter followers have you achieved and how you did it?  I imagine that the latter answer reflects your relevant, snappy and interesting Tweets.   If so, then why not make your application a Tweet?  This is a recent move being seen by American companies and it really separates candidates.  Why would I recommend you to my valued client to sell their company over Twitter when you cannot sell yourself in 140 characters?

Another development within social media is the Facebook timeline.  I have been expecting to see a raft of candidates applying for social media roles with their CV laid out in a similar timeline, but so far I have been sorely disappointed.  I know that if I got such an application I would certainly be interested to find out more about that candidate.

So job seekers stop and think.  Before you apply, look at your CV.  Would you want to read it?  Put a stop to bullet points and give me something interesting to read!