5 Tips On how to Improve Your CV
What is a cv?
A curriculum vitae, or CV, is a document job applicants use to highlight their academic and professional achievements. A curriculum vitae is typically longer than a resume and must include all of the information necessary for a recruiter to validate an applicant’s abilities, experience, and academic background. How can you improve your CV?
When screening candidates for job interviews, school admissions, scholarship programs, grant applications, and visa endorsements, a CV is frequently the first document a prospective employer looks at in many countries.
Why is having a CV Important ?
The importance of a curriculum vitae in your application process cannot be over-emphasized. A CV is a tool used to project your value, highlight your skills and previous experience to the recruiter. A well-written and well-tailored CV has the potential to expose you to lots of opportunities, even beyond the shores of your home country. It is the first point of contact used by recruiters, prospective employers, and other decision-makers to have a perception of you and your competence or fit for a job or other opportunities.
Here are Some Tips to Improve Your CV
Keep it short
The ideal length of a CV is usually a topic up for debate. However, an ideal should not be too long. The focus should be more on the content, strategic keywords, and skills and expertise highlighted. It is, however, essential to note that recruiters and prospective employers spend less than 8% of their time reading CVs. Keep your CV short with only the relevant information, leaving the rest of the data for the interviews.
Include a personal summary
It is essential to create a brief summary that describes you, your relevant previous experience and skills. A well-written and catchy resume is bound to keep the recruiter interested in reading to the end of your CV to unlock the other interesting facts and details about you and shortlist you or reach out to you for the job opportunity
Keep your CV up to date:
It is essential to keep your CV up to date and not outdated whether you’re currently in the job market or not; you should constantly keep your CV up to date with new technical and soft skills you have acquired, recent achievements, or specialized tools you have learnt. Also, if you have just moved countries, you must do your research on the standard format for the destination country and revise your CV to meet up with the standard
Make it keyword-friendly
If you’re sending your CV to a recruiter, keywords are critical for them to locate you. If unsure, go online and see what words frequently appear when you type in your job title or industry. It is vital to use the correct industry vocabulary to describe your previous experience. That way, the recruiters and prospective employers can relate your experience to the job description.
Focus on key achievements and accomplishments
Do not fill your CV with all the activities you performed in your previous job roles. Focus on the critical qualitative and quantitative achievements in the past accomplishments.
What next after you improve your CV?
After you improve your CV, it is important to set “SMART” objectives. Create an action plan to put your career plan into action now that you know what you want to do. Determine clear, time-bound goals and steps to carry out your strategy.
Specific
Define your objective clearly and precisely. For instance, a customer service specialist is responsible for customers’ queries promptly and accurately via phone, email or chat. In addition, they identify customer needs and help customers use specific features.
Measurable
Include explicit criteria for measuring progress and success. A project manager measures high and low levels, for instance, being on budget within 3% for every project; why is this important? It helps you upgrade your skills and performance as a project manager. It also makes you more valuable to the company by significantly improving performance and reliability and furthering your career.
Attainable
The goal should have a 50% or higher achievable chance. For instance, a business development consultant is to improve sales revenues and build a sustainable customer base, partnering with leaders on development strategies related to market expansion, brand projection, new client acquisition, and brand awareness resulting in 3 consecutive quarters of 115% +revenue growth.
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Relevant
The aim is significant and pertinent to you. For instance, a professional overview of a civil project engineer goes like this “A proactive, dedicated, and experienced Civil Engineer with wealthy years of experience. Over the years, I possess a successful track record in the planning, supervision, and management of small, medium, and large-scale projects from conception to consummation, which cuts across Construction Site Management Safety, Health & Safety, Training, Project Coordination, Project Planning, Resource Management, Facility Operation, and Maintenance, Risk Assessment and Management.”
Time-Bound
Set aside a specified amount of time. For instance, where a customer success manager’s responsibility is to increase the quality of customer response, putting a time frame to provide feedback on each review will help know what they can do to improve their quality, thus boosting the team’s quality. e.g. We will increase the average quality score from 3.5 to 4.2 by the end of the year.
The process of writing a perfect and professional CV can be quite daunting and stressful. At RKY Careers we support your career growth with our well-tailored personal branding services, which have been designed to help you project your value, highlight your skills and expertise and leverage on your previous experience to get your desired jobs in your desired industry.
Book a CV Writing and Optimization service now!
