Laura Smith is a highly successful recruitment consultant at OfficeTeam, a division of the award winning global recruitment agency Robert Half. She receives in excess of 100 CVs every day and regularly conducts interviews with prospective candidates. Taking a well deserved break from her daily avalanche of CVs and appointments, Laura kindly agreed to give us some application tips and pointers of what she looks for in a successful candidate.
What qualities do employers look for in a candidate?
You need to have a strong CV- that’s where it all really starts!The qualities people look for are initially going to be on the CV, so your CV really needs to be your manifesto.
They also look for work experience, hobbies and, more important than hobbies, they’ll look at your extra-curricular activities. My recommendation for anyone looking for work is to get involved in societies: sports societies, social societies, events that show that you are a team player and have had leadership experience- it demonstrates that you’ve worked on your own and created and developed skills. That can really stand out for people because it shows that you’ve given up your own free time and effort to do something, and people skills are a massive thing these days.
Another thing is that you need to have the evidence to back that up, because a lot of people will use buzzwords in their CVs. Whether you’ve been the captain of a sports team or a course representative, it shows that you’ve been involved in university life and activities outside of university. If you’re up against other graduate profiles, those are the things that will make you stand out. Employers want to see an academic history, but if you’re going to university that’ll be a given, so I think it’s important to see someone who’s really pushed themselves, stood outside their comfort zone and shown initiative by being involved in a number of different societies- that really interests people.
What are the best ways to approach a prospective employer, and is a personal touch better?
If I wanted to get into a particular job I would try every approach, I’d register my CV online with all the major job sites (Reed, Monster, Jobsite), I would link in with relevant professionals or companies and I’d send my CV to firms that were relative to what I wanted to get involved with. For example, if I were a law graduate, I’d send it to all the law firms in bristol, and if I knew the name of the partners I’d send it addressed to them. If not I’d send it through HR, or do both; the more the merrier.
I think there’s a specific way to do it. Send your CV and then a letter clearly outlining what you’re looking for. The tone shouldn’t be aggressive, you could say “please excuse my forward approach”- you can do it in a very nice way. I wouldn’t phone up and hound, if you can send it by email that’s better because you know it’s been received. If you haven’t heard anything back after a month just send an email, something very light, formal, friendly and respectful. It shows initiative, and the worst thing someone’s going to do is say no. If you’re applying for jobs, it’s always going to be competitive, so you need to put yourself out there. I think the best way is to try every approach. If they don’t have your CV they’re not in a position to say yes or no to you in the first place, so you’ve got nothing to lose.
What makes a good CV?
A good CV needs to be a working document of your job history and academic history. It needs to be very clearly laid out: you need to have the company you worked for, the job you did and the dates of employment to and from, and then have your duties in bullet points below that.
Is it better to focus on duties or accomplishments?
With your CV, the person reading it isn’t going to be a mind reader, so I think the more information the better. If it was me I’d have my list of achievements within my list of duties- probably below my list of duties, because in my experience people have listed two or three duties within a job and with most jobs you can probably list about ten. More information is better, and often it could be that one job duty or that one system you’ve used that could be the pull point for the person looking at your CV.
Do you look for specific duties?
It depends on what I’m recruiting for, but with a CV what I like is information and there seems to be a culture at the moment where people are worried about it being too long. If it’s all relevant and you’ve written down your job history I’d rather you get your point across than be in a situation where I think you haven’t done it before and throw it in the bin. Your CV is your one opportunity to make an impression with the person recruiting, that’s the thing that they’re looking at, so you need all that information on there. You should have your name, personal details at the top, then your academic history, I wouldn’t list your GCSEs, just say 10 GCSES A-C including Maths, English, Science, have your A levels and degree, and below that have your job history and most recent job first, because that’s the one people look at.
What do you think about including a link to your LinkedIn?
I think that’s a great idea, but the only thing with that is that I’d assume that some people won’t really have the time. If you’re like me you’ll get about 100 CVs a day, and I don’t have time to go on LinkedIn profiles for every CV that I see, 100 times a day. I think that’s what you’ve got to think, your CV needs to be easy for someone to read, if it’s difficult for them to read they are going to get bored and they’re probably not going to read right through it which is why bullet pointing is really important, as they can just scan down and it looks a lot neater and clearer. That would be my recommendation: the more information with your job duties the better. I would also say, the personal statement has been popular over the last few years, and I would get rid of that. It’s very subjective; of course everyone’s going to say they’re hardworking. Keep it at your academic history, extracurriculars, job history.
CV- Things To Avoid:
1. Too much personal information. People that talk in excessive detail about what they do outside of work, what they do during weekends, where they like to go out for meals, the names of their partner, pets, kids, where they go on holiday- sometimes it’s more like a dating profile than a CV.
2. When they miss the point of the CV and they have minimal information about their job and academic history, and it focuses on their life and where they’ve been on holiday for the last ten years, the top ten books they’ve read- all that kind of information is overkill. You don’t need to know that, that’s what the interview is for: you can get to know the team, see if you fit in, see what your people skills are like.The CV is the thing that will get you the interview and that needs to be more factual.
3. Another pet hate of mine is when people have their contact details right at the end of the CV. I always expect them to be right at the top, so you always have to scroll down.
4. With a recruitment consultant, we prefer for you to send it in word format, because we have to remove your contact details to send the CV to clients. Otherwise, PDF is fine but I prefer Word because it’s more difficult to remove things from a PDF document.
5. Another thing that is a pet hate for me is when people have their CV in prose; rather than having it in bullet points, they have it in sentences. Don’t do that because it’s very difficult to follow.This doesn’t just apply to me, it applies to line managers and hr managers; if you’re recruiting for a role and you get 100 applications and you’re doing it alongside your normal job, you’re going to be fairly stressed and you’ll just want to read a document that’s easy to read, you want to know what that person has done and how long they were there for. Always tailor your CV to a job, but it’s all about the format and making it easy for someone to read. Make it clear and concise. Be clear about the duties you’ve done, and have it all neatly laid out.
Part 2 to follow shortly…