The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!

Or if you really want to get the point across use the Sick Puppies cover:

Anyone else's work been taken over by the BLM situation this week? :slol:

Christ, have had my emails published over Twitter and all. Instant 'lose your job' territory.

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:Anyone else's work been taken over by the BLM situation this week? Christ, have had my emails published over Twitter and all. Instant 'lose your job' territory.

What do you mean?

Cuttooth wrote:
Oblomov Boblomov wrote:Anyone else's work been taken over by the BLM situation this week? Christ, have had my emails published over Twitter and all. Instant 'lose your job' territory.

What do you mean?

I mean there is a public-facing aspect of the community I support and I am seen as the corporate voice of it by virtue of my job title.

Oh between all that fun I forgot, I also had another business continuity meeting today and I got the working group to agree that my team shouldn't be expected back in the office until 2021 :lol:

absolutely bossed it.

I don't suppose we've got anyone on here who knows what they're doing with a CV?

I'm redoing mine as I don't feel the promises I was made in a pre-covid world will be even close to being kept post-covid so I want to look at what my options are, but i've never been any good at doing a CV so no idea what I should add/keep/remove.

Any advice anyone can provide?

Obviously the formatting is a bit dodgey with that, but for the most part that's about it.

I've no idea what else I need to add/make more prominent etc though so any help is appreciated!

Christ, mine looks horrendously dense and cluttered compared to yours.

I normally look at job listings I would be going for and tailor it around that - as a vague starting point.

I was always told previously to try and keep things to two pages, and instead of saying “I can do this” said “this is what I’ve done” where possible. But I’ve no idea how much of that I should be doing! What I want is a good base I can work with to then tailor for any jobs I go for with other slight details from there.

I usually try to avoid paragraphs of text and go for snappier bullet points - it depends on the company and popularity of the job but if it's being skimmed then it's easier to make the important stuff stand out in bullet form.

I have perhaps 3 sentences as a personal statement, then bullet points for key skill areas, work history with summary of responsibilities/accomplishment in each case (two lines per role, not all roles listed), education and finally a nicely formatted list of "keyword" type skills because I've done so many things I want to appear versatile because I am. Mine is two pages with important gooseberry fool on the first page, of course. I have a couple of visuals in a left column (which would normally be blank white space) but that's only necessary for visual arts stuff because you can talk so much about this stuff while having no evidence of it in those words, because words are words.

It's basically a "I know lots of gooseberry fool with which I have done a range of different gooseberry fool" type CV and I always tailor a personal statement for every application, been a while though.

Last few headhunters who got in touch were pretty wide of the mark though, I've been approached for everything from VFX artist for a video games company in Brighton (when I did a single internship in VFX for television) to a fabrication lab manager in Qatar. So maybe that's the down side. The couple of actual web development roles list like 90% stuff I've never touched, it's weird.

Those actually come from LinkedIn by marking myself as available even if I'm not, so that may be worth a try. I have a couple hundred connections which at least suggest (a) my profile is complete and relevant to anybody, ever and (b) I have actual industry contacts which is kind of tantamount to experience - not always, but sometimes it is.

Joer wrote:I don't suppose we've got anyone on here who knows what they're doing with a CV?

I'm redoing mine as I don't feel the promises I was made in a pre-covid world will be even close to being kept post-covid so I want to look at what my options are, but i've never been any good at doing a CV so no idea what I should add/keep/remove.

Any advice anyone can provide?

Obviously the formatting is a bit dodgey with that, but for the most part that's about it.

I've no idea what else I need to add/make more prominent etc though so any help is appreciated!

Clarkman works in recruitment.

Clarkman wrote:Hey!

Hello Joer lad. As Drummy says, spent 6 years in recruitment. Have opened your CV and will PM you some tips in the morning.

Lovely, thanks guys. :wub:

The current role I’m looking at is a head of contact centres role where they’re going through a lot of changes as they had really bad employee engagement scores and want to increase performance and lower staff turnover which is why I’ve focused on some areas in my CV in particular.

Joer wrote:Lovely, thanks guys.

The current role I’m looking at is a head of contact centres role where they’re going through a lot of changes as they had really bad employee engagement scores and want to increase performance and lower staff turnover which is why I’ve focused on some areas in my CV in particular.

Are you generally applying direct to employers or through agencies?

This first role is direct to the employer. At the moment I’m really just putting the feelers out there to see what there is, I think if/when I look around properly I’ll get in touch with recruiters but I didn’t think it was worth wasting their time at the moment!

Stands out to me:
Use bullet points
Reduce word count
Drop the GCSE's

I'm not in recruitment though so clarkman will have a much better idea than me.

I agree. Promote your key responsibilities by highlighting them in bullet-points; don't hide them in walls of text.

A recruiter will often have many, many CVs to review and they don't want to read essay after essay.

Joer wrote:Hi!

Posting advice in the thread in case it is helpful to more people:

The main thing to bear in mind when submitting CVs is to tailor to the job description and audience you're submitting to. As a recruiter, I would generally be able to vet whether a CV was relevant to position I was managing in under 10 seconds. I would only 'read' the CV if it met what I was looking for.

The most important thing to a recruiter is your current/recent job titles. Make sure it is as closely matched to the position you're applying to as possible. It doesn't matter if you adjust/change whatever your 'official' job title is at your current work place. Where ever possible, try to use the same words and language as your potential new employer does in their job description/advert.

Next is formatting. Recruiters and employers generally use CRMs to manage applications and the CRMs HATE unnecessary formatting. Better to have your CV over 3 pages than use those strawberry floating boxes on one or two. Don't use PDFs ever, because they can't be edited for anonymity. Just have a standard Word document, with a flow of most recent to least recent.

Second most important thing is any 'gaps' in your CV or any inconsistencies in dates. For example, for Joer, it is odd that he has an overlap in his most recent two roles.

Have an 'About Me' OR a 'Personal Statement' - never both. Recruiters honestly mostly don't care beyond whether you can potentially do the job, and your motivation for leaving your current work place. How good you are at your jobs is secondary.

As others have said, split the blocks of text into digestible bullet points. Prioritise accounting for CORE RESPONSIBILITIES and ACHIEVEMENTS. Don't neglect the first part. Don't assume they know/understand what your job actually involves on a day to day basis. A 50/50 ratio of content between these two is a good idea.

If you're a manager like Joer, mention how many people are in your team. Joer has otherwise done a really good job at including some nice numbers and stats. Stats are great.

Mention the databases and systems you use. These are the key words employers care about. The less they have to train you on, the better.

If you got less than a 2:1 at University, do NOT include your grade. Harsh, but necessary.

Include dates for your education.

Include your postcode. For strawberry float sake, please include your postcode. You can't be added to a system without a postcode.

Getting no replies from recruitment agencies after I send my CV in to them and zero replies from jobs I go for. Very annoying but just got to keep picking away I imagine in this climate.

Clarkman.

Cheers pal. I'll go over what i've got in the draft today and amend it to what you've included there.

Much appreciated!

The Work Thread 2 - Get back to work!

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