How To Optimise Your CV For An Online Database

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Perhaps like thousands of others you have posted your CV onto an online job board. Registration is free and easy, and it almost seems too good to be true. You invest 10 minutes of your time, post your CV, and then sit back and wait for the phone and the emails.

This is a great way to minimise effort and maximise exposure to jobs you might never have heard about. However, if you don’t consider what happens to your CV once you post it online, you might have to wait for a long time for the interview call or miss out on plum jobs.

To improve your chances of success, it is worth knowing what happens to your CV once it lands in the online database , how a job board actually works, and how a recruiter uses this resource to find their candidates. Job boards generally operate by charging recruiters to search the database, that’s why it’s free for you to register. The recruiters will invariably be in a hurry and often under pressure in their candidate search, because the only way a recruiter will get paid, and their company profits, is by placing successful candidates with their clients.

How does a recruiter find my CV?

Recruiters will input combinations of search words to find the exact candidate they are looking for. Their search will be quick depending on how specific their search terms are: the number of CVs returned from a search may vary between just a few and several hundred. If the exact words for the skills, qualifications or experience that they are searching for do not appear on your CV in a narrow search you may never be pulled from the pack, or at best in a wider search you might appear so far down the results list that your recruiter has logged off and gone home before they even get to you.

In practice, a skilled recruiter will typically scan their target job description to look for search terms including the sector, job title alternatives, key skills, specific software packages or the technical, professional or academic qualifications which are essential criteria for the job.

They are looking for as close a match as possible, and will use a technique called Boolean or logical searching to mine the candidate database. Boolean searching uses “operators” which include the terms ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘not’ to find the candidate with the right combination of keywords in their CV.

You can visualise a Boolean search by imagining a Venn diagram, for instance a Boolean search for engineer and graduate will find all the candidates who overlap in the group in the middle on your diagram, and who are both engineers and graduates. Alternatively a search for engineer or graduate will find all the candidates who have the either of the terms graduate or engineer on their CV.

The important point to remember is that if you don’t have the same terms that the recruiter is using in their Boolean search, you stand no chance.

To illustrate how critical this is in practice as an example, it means listing specific software packages, for instance: Excel or Powerpoint. If you have simply written on your CV, “good knowledge of Microsoft Office”, while clearly the semantics demonstrate that you have the skills required, the Boolean search performed by the recruiter does not have the logic to understand that “Microsoft Office” actually means Excel or Powerpoint. Consequently and disastrously you might be completely missed on a search for someone with Excel or Powerpoint.

Put yourself in the recruiter’s shoes

In order to optimise your CV you need to put yourself in the place of a recruiter, and imagine what search words they might use to find someone just like you for your target job. Don’t presume that because your previous company used one job title, that there’s no other term that could describe it, or that the recruiter will have sufficient knowledge or skill to use the various alternative phrases to describe your job title in their own search. As a rather tenuous but illustrative example, although a recruiter is highly unlikely to be looking for a beverage trading assistant, let us suppose that they were, and that they had only used the exact phrase “beverage trading assistant”. This is your forte, you have years of experience multi-tasking tirelessly in aiding and assisting others to imbibe alcoholic beverages, washing glasses and ejecting those who have become a little too boisterous. You dream endlessly of landing your next beverage trading assistant, and this one is paying £50 per hour. However you have exclusively used the term “bar tender”, and unless you have also peppered your CV with various descriptive terms including the term “beverage trading assistant”, then sadly you will never appear in that particular search, your CV will continue to languish in the depths of the database and your return to the days of working behind a bar will continue to evade you.

My advice is to invest some time now, reappraise your CV for an online job board, think like a search engine and let your CV spiral its way up to its rightful place on the desk of your future employer.

Originally published here: https://jobs.theguardian.com/article/how-to-optimise-your-cv-for-an-online-database/

 

How To Apply For Your Dream Job, When Your Skills Don’t Meet The Spec

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You see your dream job being advertised but you don’t quite match the job specifications listed: should you still apply?

Eighteen-year-old Georgia Goodman faced this scenario last year when she applied for a digital marketing graduate scheme, despite having no university degree. Instead she had three months’ experience in marketing via an apprenticeship.

“I was pleased to be offered an interview and told that, although I wasn’t a graduate, my passion and experience working within the B2B sector is what made my employer change his mind about the position they were advertising,” she explains. Georgia is now a digital marketing assistant at the Nottingham-based company and has been funded to complete a vocational qualification.

“You have to be in it to win it,” says Becky Mossman, a HR director at HireRight. Ambition like Georgia’s is one of the key things that employers look for and as long as it isn’t a wild pipe dream, it’s commendable. “A lot of the time candidates have more skills and experience than they even realise, the struggle is often when it comes to articulating those skills in a meaningful way,” she adds.

“No one candidate is ever actually perfect,” points out Jon Gregory, editor of win-that-job.com. Any shortlist will therefore represent a spread of skills, qualifications and experiences and you could aim to fit on one end of that spread.

Highlight your transferable skills
If you’re short on specifically required qualifications, show that a combination of your other qualifications and experience are at least as good, if not actually better, says Gregory. What else have you done that brings along sufficient relevant experience? Where do you bring something unexpected and potentially very valuable with you to the organisation? It could be a relevant foreign language, or an extra qualification, for example.

Draw from your academic experience as well as your work experience and think about your transferrable skills, says Mohammed Rahman, business development and placements executive at London School of Business and Finance. He says: “As an example, customer service skills are needed in every profession and are important skills to have.”
He adds: “A lot of companies promote opportunities with requirements and would be willing to consider and take on people who do not meet all the criteria but have an open mind regarding how far they are willing to go to train and learn on the job.”

Make a strong case at the start – and don’t be negative
Make a clear, strong case in the introductory summary about your overall suitability, and at all costs, avoid drawing attention to your shortfalls, says Gregory. “One sight of those will switch the reviewer to a negative mindset, reading on only in search of further justification to drop your application into the shredder.” Don’t be deceptive, just selective.

Demonstrate that this is your dream job
“This is the application that has to hit the back of the net, nothing can be standard,” says Mossman. For example, if it’s a creative role, do something big that sets you apart from the field and makes the recruiter question whether the pure job description match is what they really need.

“If it’s really your dream job, then you should be able to make a clear case for why that is, and still come across as completely genuine”, she says. Think carefully about what skills you can bring to the table – they might be from a job you had five years ago, they might be from a sports team or hobby. If they apply, make it clear what you’ve gained from that experience, and why that’s as valuable as the tick box achievements that are on the job description.

Do your research – and remember they will do theirs too
Gregory advises that candidates research deeply into the company before compiling an application or tailoring your CV. “You need to show that you really do understand the role, the challenges, why this role is important to the organisation as a whole and what it is about you that makes you viable to shortlist for interview,” he explains. If you can, speak to the HR people organising the selection process and your potential line manager. The more you can engage in a dialogue with people inside the organisation and breed familiarity, the better.

While you do your research on the company, remember that the company might do research on you too. Perhaps most importantly of all, check your entire online presence to make sure the image you paint in the application is consistent across LinkedIn and your references, warns Mossman. “Otherwise, the hard work of wowing them will all be for nothing. “Employers don’t all admit to checking up on applicants via external channels, but it’s not uncommon for decision makers to use every means available to reassure themselves of their choice,” she explains.

And finally, remember: there are upsides to applying even if you don’t get shortlisted. Rahman says: “Remember, you have nothing to lose. If it is a dream job then it is worth the time invested in applying. It will act as a good testing ground for future opportunities.” Recognise that you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, even if that’s only a list of what you need to work at for next time a role like that comes up.

 

Written by Kirstie Brewer, Originally published here: https://jobs.theguardian.com/article/how-to-apply-for-your-dream-job-when-your-skills-don-t-meet-the-job-spec/