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23.01.2022 To format or not to format? The way your CV reads and flows is paramount to it's success in getting you to an interview. Many online formatting tools look very pretty, but are they really doing what you need them to do? Columns, boxes and interesting fonts might make your CV stand out in terms of initial design, but what is important is how it flows. Boxes and columns are a tool developed by the magazine industry, and for that it works perfectly. It encourages the eye to brow...se. That is absolutely NOT what you want to happen with your CV. The last thing you want is for a reader to miss the important details (your transferable skills) because their eye is being drawn off to a box containing your qualifications. Another thing you need to consider is the use of colour. It might look lovely on the screen, but in real life, recruiters will print off your CV in greyscale. Suddenly, what was a highlight becomes less impactful than the black and white elements. All elements are important, but your front page needs to deliver and that means it needs to be easy to read. See more

16.01.2022 Checking your tone of voice. Most people don't realise that each element of an application has it's own purpose. Your email content, cover letter, CV/resume and even the interview tick different boxes in terms of your journey to getting hired. Your email - This is the first point of contact. It needs to be friendly and engaging, setting out why you are specifically interested in the company you are applying to. Try to keep it as concise as possible while still conveying enth...usiasm. Make sure you cover the important points in the first few sentences as recruiters can dive straight for the attachments, but can be put off by a bad opening. The Cover Letter - This is still an exercise in proving you can put yourself across professionally in grammatically correct sentences. It's not often in this day and age that you have to write a formal letter, but this is one of them. Keep it to one page. Don't be chatty. If anywhere is the place for business-speak, this is it. Your CV - This needs to be as punchy as possible. Avoid filler words and throw away phrases. Don't over-stuff bullet points, but equally, try and condense your experience as much as possible. Focus on key transferable skills that prove you can do the job you are applying for. You don't have to put absolutely every job you've ever done in there, and it's OK to consolidate similar roles. The interview - Well done! You got there. They already believe you can do the job or you wouldn't be invited. This is where you need to make them LIKE you and want you on the team. Make sure you know some great anecdotes from your career and try to workshop answers to questions where you might find yourself struggling. And finally, don't forget we're not shaking hands right now and make the most of your smile!

13.01.2022 A bit about Bots and skill shopping lists. In an attempt to fox those pesky Bots that crawl your CV in order to pre-filter for specific skill sets, a frequent tactic is to write up a 'Shopping List' of skills. More often than not, these are counterproductive, as while you're trying to feed the Bot what it wants, you're forgetting about the human that's going to read it once the Bot has finished with it. To that human, Shopping Lists of skills just make you look like you're la...zily ticking boxes with no evidence of how you got those skills or explaining how great you are at using them. Some lists can be downright perplexing for a human to read. As a recruiter, I would be very concerned to learn that a candidate considered 'Punctual' or 'Email and Internet' to be a skill rather than a basic necessity. Of course you need to take the bots into consideration, but not at the expense of the person scratching their head at how your resume made it through the filter. For tips on how to Bot-proof your CV and make it more appealing to humans, drop us a line and find out how we can help. See more

11.01.2022 A particularly pertinent point. A post about how the current world upheaval affects you when applying for work. Have you ever heard of Industry Bias? It's an insidious thing and half the time, even recruiters don't realise their bias is showing. It happens when someone looks at your CV and sees your job titles from now all the way back to the beginning of your career. If your job title doesn't bear any resemblance to the job you're applying for or worse, if you've spent your ...entire career in one industry, you often end up in the bin rather than on the shortlist. That's what is happening for people all across the travel industry right now. Dedicated, skilled people who have spent their whole careers in one industry (often in just one company). The key to overcoming industry bias is to make sure everything on your front page is a transferable skill. Look carefully at the job description and make sure your skills match. Once the reader turns the page, they will already know you have the skills you need to do the job they are recruiting for. If you need help extracting your transferable skills from your experience, drop us a line. It's why we exist as a service. See more

07.01.2022 I've written about Industry Bias before, but over the past few months, I've come up with an analogy that I really like. Look at this photo. Would you expect to sell your house if it looked like this? You might like it, but everyone knows that neutral styling sells houses. An industry-specific CV with no emphasis on transferable skills is the employment equivalent of painting your walls purple. To sell yourself, you need to take industry bias out of the front page, making it industry neutral. That way it's your skills, not your job title that the reader is focussed on. And your ability to do the job isn't tainted by other peoples' preconceptions of what a Travel Agent can and can't do.