by Lis McGuire | Sep 29, 2014 | CV tips, Graduate CV tips, News
Have you ever wondered how to quantify achievements on your CV?
This morning, I received an email from one of my lovely customers. I had sent her an initial draft of her new CV, along with some notes for discussion, and mentioned that it would be useful for us to work on quantifying and qualifying her achievements within her roles. I had also sent her a link to my recent blog, which explains why this process is so important.
Her reply came back, “I always get stuck with achievements on my CV. I can’t think of anything obvious that has a measurable impact on the company.”
This lady is not alone. Quantifying and qualifying achievements is a stumbling block that trips up many people when they attempt to write a CV. It can all feel too much like hard work, the CV writing equivalent of searching for the Holy Grail. Many jobseekers seriously doubt that those tangible results are there to find.
With this in mind, I thought it would be useful to put together a set of five achievement hacks. These should help you to shortcut what can be a laborious process, and avoid you sitting rubbing your chin for hours on end, getting increasingly frustrated by the minute. Here they are:
#1 Think of what you already know
Although, initially, you may not think of them, you will already have some facts and figures firmly in your grasp, ready to be noted on your CV.
For example:When talking about your team, quantify the size of the team. Say that you lead XX people, and note their job titles. If you have played a key role in growing the team, indicate the level of team expansion, from X to X employees, in what defined period of time.You could go on to say what the impact of this expansion was for your employer – how did they leverage that enhanced people power? Did the increased resources allow them to secure more customers (how many?), increase revenue (by how much?), or diversify their service offering (what’s new?)?
If you manage a client account, how have you developed that relationship? Have you retained the account within a competitive market? If so, how many times has the contract been renewed? What is the revenue and profit from the account? Have you increased these figures? Have you leveraged the relationship to position your employer for new work with other respected clients? Again, how many? How much?
Even if this data is not quite at your fingertips, ready to slot into your CV, it should be relatively easy to gather and leverage to illustrate your value.
#2 Look at the data that is already available
If you are lacking inspiration, one place to find it is within the public domain, placed there by your company. Whether you peruse the company website, marketing brochure, social media sites, or annual report, you should find plenty of quantified achievements which your employer wants to sing from the rooftops. Although these may be on a larger scale than you can claim to have delivered, track it back and think about what you have specifically delivered that has supported the achievement of these more grandiose accomplishments.
#3 Consider your employer’s ‘pain point’ that enticed them to hire you
You were recruited for a reason, not just to expand the workforce. What was that reason? What were you employed to do? What problem did your recruitment aim to solve? Look back at the job advert if you still have it, or your job description for inspiration.
Or, if you can’t lay your hands on these documents, consider the reason you were employed. I don’t mean to simply replace the last person who carried out you role. What would have happened if the company hadn’t replaced your predecessor? Who would have taken on those responsibilities? Would these extra tasks have decreased this team member’s bandwidth for other important work? What would the results have been?
Once you have that reason firmly in mind, think about the work you have done to move towards that goal, and try to quantify it. For example, if you work in recruitment, perhaps your remit was to develop a talent pool full of pre-qualified candidates to shorten the recruitment process, ensure that managers could select appropriately skilled individuals, and facilitate achievement of their goals. Think of the numbers involved – how many people have you sourced and interviewed? How many have you hired?
#4 Revisit your last appraisal
In today’s cut-and-thrust world, most employees are targeted and monitored to within an inch of their lives – it’s not enough to have a general sense that you are a good egg, or that you are achieving. Your input and results are likely to be be targeted, assessed, quantified, and graded on a company-wide and closely monitored scale. Although this may feel like a lot of pressure on a day-to-day basis whilst you are at work, it is good news for your CV. Revisit your last appraisal. The results of what you are doing, and how far you have come, should be there, plain and clear for all to see.
#5 Get specific
If quantifiable achievements for your role as a whole are proving to be elusive, then think about a specific project you have worked on. What was the objective? What was the budget? The timeframe? The size of the team? Who did you interact with, internally and externally? Did you achieve the objective? What was the result to the company, in the short and long term?
If you take a handful of projects like this and quantify and qualify them, then before you know it, your CV will have the depth and substance you are looking for.
I lay down the gauntlet.
Pick up your CV where you last left it, and put some meat on the bones. If you do, you’ll take it from a boring 2D summary to a dynamic 3D promise.
In a nutshell, you are looking to quantify your achievements to add meaningful substance to your CV, and expressing these through numbers makes it easier for recruiters and prospective employers to pick out relevant information, as numbers often speak for themselves.
by Lis McGuire | Sep 22, 2014 | Interview Advice, News
Those of you who know me will know that this blog title is by no means a brag. I am the world’s worst worrier, and actually a bit of an old school square. It is not in my makeup to leave things to chance. I am Mrs On-It-and-All-Over-It, Mrs Well-Prepared-But-Lacks-Spontaneity, and many other names that my so-laid-back-he’s-horizontal husband calls me, in jest, which I wouldn’t like to repeat.
However, once upon a time, about 20 years ago, I applied for a job that I really wanted and then spectacularly overslept for the interview. Here’s what happened.
Life before the interview
I was a second-year undergraduate at the University of Liverpool, recently relocated from Morton House halls of residence to a decrepit old flat on Greenbank Road, just off the infamous Smithdown Road.
Every day, on my way to lectures, I passed this quaint café, the Dormouse Tearooms, located above a fancy dress shop. One morning (or was it afternoon, I forget), when passing, I noticed a job advertised in the window and, though I don’t remember doing so, I must have submitted my CV. The next thing I knew, I had been offered an interview.
The night before the interview
I was really excited and even turned down the opportunity to go out the night before my Saturday morning interview. I retired to bed early, set my alarm, and dreamt sweet dreams of serving tea to real life Liverpudlians, whilst wearing full Victorian costume (this part was a reality of the job!).
Then disaster struck. In the small hours of the morning, a drunk friend of my housemate woke me by banging loudly at the front door. Though I gave the individual short shrift, it took a fair while for them to get on their way, back to the bright lights and many bars of Smithdown Road.
The morning of the interview
The next thing I knew, light was streaming in through the curtains and someone else was persistently knocking at the front door. Realising that I had massively overslept, I leapt out of my futon with the long since forgotten agility of youth, ran frantically down the stairs and opened the door to my would-be interviewer. I was over an hour late for the actual interview!
I can now picture the interviewer in my head, waiting, waiting, waiting, then deciding there was nothing for it, she was going to have to come and physically knock on my door and find out what was delaying me. Rather than being ready, smart, clean, tidy, I was in a state of total disarray, making the worst possible first impression. What must she have thought!
I profusely apologised, promised to be at the interview in record time, and managed to compose myself enough to attend and recover the situation. Unbelievably, at the end of all of this drama, I was offered the job. It turned out to be a dream job for a student and, to me now, it represents a very happy time in my life.
After the interview
My interviewer, Amanda, became a heart-warming and lifelong friend. She well and truly took me under her wing. Each Saturday that I worked, she cooked me a lunch that students can only dream of. She often invited me to her home, and even sent me back to my flat with supplies, to make sure I was fed throughout the coming week. Many years later, she attended my wedding in Ireland, and has kept in touch with cards and letters ever since.
I recently asked Amanda why she gave me a second chance. She couldn’t even remember me being late! She wrote, “God, girl, I am getting old. I can’t remember it, but I am glad I did. You were the best of all the girls she had working for her.” I am pretty sure that she embellished that last part, but the point is that my misdemeanour quickly faded from memory, replaced by what I did next, ranging from eating her out of house and home, through to sobbing my heart out at our work night out to see Jerry McGuire at the cinema.
Takeaways
There are two morals to my story. The first is not to give up when things go wrong. A mistake doesn’t need to define you. If you act quickly and show commitment, there should be plenty more opportunities to create a new perception of yourself. The second moral is to invest in a good alarm clock.
by Lis McGuire | Aug 18, 2014 | CV tips, News
A common question raised by my customers is ‘When can I patch up my CV and when do I really need to go back to the drawing board?’ Sometimes a quick CV update will suffice, but more often that not a comprehensive rewrite is a better approach to ensure their CV really serves their needs. Read on to discover when to choose either a quick fix or a total overhaul when refreshing your CV.
Willington Street, the main access road to my home office, is finally undergoing an extensive repair programme. The local council is investing £1.2M over the next 12 months to reconstruct and resurface the well-used road. The plan is to carry out the work in three distinct phases, sectioning off parts of the road at a time to carry out these much-needed repairs.
Kent County Council have outlined with pride their plans to: grind off the top layer of the road; repair the lower layers of the road; sweep with a mechanical sweeper to remove dust and debris; lay a strengthening membrane; adjust all manhole covers and drains; lay the new road surface and finally repaint all the road markings. Sounds comprehensive, doesn’t it?
Despite the considerable disruption to residents and regular users of the road, in the long run the benefit of a properly constructed, strong and smooth road surface will be well worth the short-term inconvenience. Having myself sacrificed more than a handful of low profile tyres courtesy of the street’s potholes, I, for one, can’t wait for the new surface. I drive a Skoda, but the bill has still made me wince.
You may be wondering why I am writing about local highway improvements rather than CVs or related job search topics. The long-awaited resurfacing of Willington Street got me thinking about how people update their CV, and the effectiveness of a quick update (think pothole repair) versus a total reconstruction (think resurfacing). A quick update of your CV here or there is, of course, better than no update at all. There is no substitute, however, for a complete, thorough job every once in a while.
Follow the guidance below to establish when you can just fill in the potholes and when you really should lay a whole new surface.
When you can quickly update or patch up your CV
For me, a quick CV update is perfectly acceptable when you are adding something to your CV that doesn’t have a major knock-on effect on other parts of your CV.
A quick update is perfectly acceptable when you are adding detail that isn’t game-changing in terms of how you define yourself and your overall career goals. If what you are adding is a natural extension of your career goals, as they are already implied and stated on your CV, then an update is fine.
If, for example, you are adding details of a professional qualification that complements your existing skills, experience and qualifications, then an update is fine. If you are adding details of a new project to your description of your current role, then an update is fine. If you are adding details of a new skill or area of responsibility that enhances, but doesn’t dramatically alter, your career target or overall positioning statement, then an update is fine.
Two signs your CV needs extensive reconstruction
The problem is that, as with pothole repairs on an existing road, once you’ve done a few, your CV does seem to be a different document and doesn’t have the same seamless appeal that it did when you first wrote it. As time goes on and things change for you professionally and personally, your CV content will no doubt change as well. It’s only natural. Before you know it, three to 10 updates later, your CV may be looking more like a patchwork quilt than a vehicle designed to take your career from A to B.
Here are two telling signs that you need to stop with the quick fixes and invest in a comprehensive overhaul of your CV:
1. What you do has fundamentally changed since you last wrote your CV. If you are working in a new role, secured through an internal transfer or promotion or external career move, your CV will require a complete overhaul. Your CV’s job is to position you for future moves, rather than ones that have already happened.
2. What you want has fundamentally changed since you last wrote your CV. If your goals have changed, then your CV needs to change too to reflect your new aspirations. If you don’t tell the recruiter what you want, then how are they supposed to know? It may be that you are seeking a change of role, change of industry or even change of lifestyle – whichever, your CV should make your goals heard, loud and clear.
When did you last update your CV? Was it a quick fix or a thorough job?
For a smoother ride from job A to job B, it’s worth taking the time to reconstruct your CV instead of doing a patch job and just filling in the potholes. As with the road repairs outside my home office, it could be disruptive, inconvenient and time-consuming, but your CV will end up stronger, slicker and more meaningful.
by Lis McGuire | Jul 28, 2014 | CV tips, Graduate CV tips, News, Social media for your job search
It’s my birthday this week, and how better to celebrate it than by sharing my very own prezumé!
A while ago on the blog, Giraffe CVs examined unusual CVs coming soon to a job hunt near you, discussing some creative methods that jobseekers are using to ensure their applications stand out from the crowd.
It got me thinking about creating my very own, not because I’m looking for a job (I’m very happy in mine), but because (a) I thought it would be fun and (b) it might provide a useful reference point for jobseekers seeking to inject a bit of creativity into their job search. Although the idea to produce a creative CV of my own had been burning in the background for some time, I should credit an inspirational jobseeker, Paul Duxbury, who inspired me to action with his own recent prezumé. Thanks Paul!
‘What IS a prezumé?’ I hear you asking.
A prezumé is a combination of a Prezi presentation and a resume. As Prezi explains here, the prezumé was born by chance, as jobseekers sought a different visual medium to showcase their credentials.
How is a prezumé similar to a traditional CV?
Both need to provide the information that a recruiter is looking for, essentially giving them the reason(s) why they should call you up today and request an interview.
Consider a prezumé as a movie trailer to your CV, it should highlight the key messages you want to get across to a target recruiter and leave them wanting to find out more by reading the full feature.
How is a prezumé different from a traditional CV?
The great thing about a prezumé, along with other creative CVs, is that it provides jobseekers with the opportunity to showcase their personality alongside their skills and experience.
In my view, a creative CV shouldn’t just replicate your formal CV or LinkedIn profile. The medium presents an opportunity to get funky, tell a story and really engage your target audience.
How to get started with a prezumé
Prezi provides a selection of three helpful templates to suit different tastes and targets. These present a great easy way to get started. You can even mix and match template components using the My Collection feature, customising your structure and look for a unique deliverable.
I had a quick look at the templates, but decided to create my own blank Prezi. Here’s how I did it:
1. I decided on the key points I wanted to include in my prezumé and thought about how to present them in a way that would engage the reader
2. I developed a logical structure for my story
3. I sourced great images to bring my messages to life, using Dollar Photo Club
4. I pulled together my slides in PicMonkey – I love their fonts and features
5. I imported all my finished images slides to PowerPoint
6. I uploaded my PowerPoint to Prezi
7. I shared with a very select group to gauge their reactions then decided to go live!
Prezi have shared some handy hints for an awesome Prezi here.
Would I recommend using a prezumé in your job search?
In some contexts, it just might work! The new trends in CV writing are unlikely to replace traditional CVs in the short term, but they can definitely complement them. They’re good for grabbing attention in the right context and showing off some highlights, although the wackier versions are certainly only for the brave and bold.
There is an inherent risk with any kind of creative CV, that what looks and feels great to you may alienate the recruiter (remember, these are busy people for whom time is of the essence). There’s also a chance that design features on your CV could distract from your key message.
It’s all about knowing your audience and hitting the right tone.
by Lis McGuire | Jul 8, 2014 | Job search advice, Job transition advice, News
Imagine the scenario. A few weeks into your job search, your mobile rings when you are not expecting a call.
At this point you are likely to feel very excited that your application has actually been seen and enticed a real person to call you up. However, you’ve applied for so many similar roles that you are not actually sure which job they are referring to. Caught off guard, you are suddenly very much on the back foot.
You haven’t tracked your applications in a clear way, and are flummoxed as to which opportunity this exciting call actually relates to. Although you are determined to blag it, you are painfully aware that being caught on the hop means that you are not presenting the calm and professional image that you had aspired to deliver.
This is why using a job search tracking system is essential to manage your job search, enabling you to keep a handle on pending applications and ensure a professional response each and every time.
Here are four key benefits of tracking your job search:
It allows you to keep a firm grasp on which jobs you have applied for (so you know the status of each application and are well-prepared for the recruiter’s call)
It gives you a clear oversight of which version of your CV you have presented for each job opportunity (handy for the interview if you are offered one!)
It enables you to track what is working versus what is NOT working in terms of your job search activities (allowing you to refocus and refine your efforts)
It ensures that you don’t apply for a job more than once (saving your blushes, your precious time and that of the recruiter)
What elements of your job search should you track?
Job site details:
Name and website address of the job sites you are using
Your registration details including user name and password (keep these secure either by password-protecting your document or keeping physical files under lock and key)
Details of services signed up for on each site
Jobs applications:
Position title, employer name and reference number of any jobs applied for
Through which job site or other medium (employer website, careers fair, referral from an existing employee, recruitment agency etc.)
Date the application was submitted
Copies of the job advert, job description, person specification and application forms or guidance, if available
Which version of your CV and cover letter you applied with – keep copies on file for each application
Contact details for the recruiter and the employer in question
Any responses in terms of acknowledgements of receipt, information on the recruitment process – referencing the name, title and organisation of each and every contact you engage with in relation to a particular application, along with the date and time of any contact
Details of any follow up activities you undertake in relation to the application and your scheduled next steps
Interview details (think positive – build it and they will come!)
What tools can you use to track your job search?
Low-tech ideas
Tracking your job search doesn’t need to be a high-tech activity. It can be as simple as manually recording details of jobs applied for in a notepad, or using an A4 file to keep printouts of all job application details, with a divider to separate each one.
Or, you could use a Microsoft Word document or Excel spreadsheet. You can develop your own chart, selecting headers to meet your own needs, or request a free one from us via enquiries@giraffecvs.co.uk.
You can print the chart as a blank template to fill in as you make progress in your job search, or keep it on your PC or laptop if you are likely to be at your computer to access the information when the recruiter calls.
If you are likely to receive a call from a recruiter whilst out and about, it would be worth familiarising yourself with your current applications, however it is perfectly acceptable to politely thank the recruiter for calling you, ask for details of the client company, specific role details and where they found you, then ask to set up the call at a better time.
Online job search tracking tools
Some online job sites offer candidates the facility to create a profile which will track the jobs they have applied for on that site, keeping all the relevant data in one place so you can easily call it to hand as needed. This works fine when you are concentrating your job search activities on one specific site, but if you are using a number of sites, this could be complex to manage.
Another option is using an online job search management tool, which have been developed to help candidates to track their job search activities. Free examples include:
JibberJobber
JibberJobber describes itself as ‘a personal relationship manager that allows you to do everything you need to do to manage a job search and optimize your network relationships – for the duration of your career!’ The site’s features allow jobseekers to manage and organise their job search by keeping track of applications, managing relationships with professional contacts and targeting companies which may support their career goals.
Jobspeaker
Jobspeaker helps candidates to stay organised in their job search. The site enables jobseekers to proactively manage all of the details of their job search, making sure that they are always ready for a recruiter’s call.
Jobseekers can search for jobs across their favourite job boards, rank jobs and track progress of applications, manage events and interviews, store job search documents, research and track potential employers and manage their contacts.
Have you been tracking your job search? If so, are you using a high-tech or low-tech approach? If not, it’s never too late to start! Request your free copy of the MS Word chart we have developed to help you track your job search at enquiries@giraffecvs.co.uk
