Wednesday 25 July 2012

Its all about the CV

It was the last day of my monthly railcard today so I decided to make use of it and go down "to the smoke" to see an agent.

Here's my approach so far:

  • Don't just apply for all relevant jobs you see on the web: the world and his wife have already done that!
  • Develop a close relationship with selected recruitment agents and hopefully they can put you in the path of a few decent jobs before they are posted and everyone starts applying
  • Start going through each job I am applying for and look at the bullet points of what if required for the post: and then re edit my CV to address these points directly in the CV
With the above in mind I trotted into town to see an agent at Badenoch and Clark which is just on the north side of the river.

I only got to chat with the agent for 20 mins: however these were the most useful 20 mins of my job search so far.

When I chat to an agent I'm grateful for any time he/she has.  Time taken speaking to me is time that the agent is not using to place people at a profit: and its a high pressure business.

I've worked for a couple of recruitment agencies in the past (IT manager for one,  helpdesk manager for the other) and I've always had a health respect for agents.  Many people have a bad image of agents,  often because they don't let you know if you have failed to get an interview or that they bombard you with unsuitable roles,  but I've always held a positive view.  The thing I like about agents is that "what you see is what you get" : there seems to be little politics playing: and if you do have an issue with an agent: just move on: there are plenty more!

Anyway the agent was pretty brutal about my CV which was just what I was after.  He said that it would be one of the first in the bin and gave some pretty convincing reasons to back that up.

Basically I need to go into much greater detail (and probably bullet points) about my previous role: as its the last 5 years its what people will be most interested in and it should take up most of the front page of the CV.

With that in mind I will be contacting my colleague who is still working part time for my former employers and will draw up a list of all our projects before some of them begin to disappear into the mists of time.

I have been using LinkedIn to create my CVs and will do so again once I have all my projects and achievements listed properly.

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