Four Steps a Recruiter Takes to Trash CVs and Resumes Written by Dr. Amjad Rafiq
Having 200-300 CVs or resumes to analyse, a tight schedule, and probably working late, an employer's or recruiting manager's approach is to scan huge pile quickly and look for any little reason to trash your CV or resume. Learn how to avoid your CV or resume being trashed and how to almost guarantee that it gets noticed and shortlisted.The scenario described above of a recruiting manager or employer is fairly typical. With hundreds of CVs or resumes, little time, and pressure of identifying best person for job, strategy a recruiter takes is to first eliminate all those who show any little sign of being worthy of elimination. And basis of that is your CV and resume, highlighting great importance attached to this one or two page document. So what happens when pile of 300 CVs and resumes are put in front of recruitment manager? Well there are three main steps, which are taken to filter pile. Filtering is needed to choose appropriate candidates for interview stage. So those not worthy of being interviewed have their CVs or resumes trashed. Let’s take a look at them one by one. The first stage: The 5-10 second glance The recruitment manager is not going to spend minutes going through each CV or resume to find what he is looking for. Rather, his first step is to spend at most 10 seconds to take a quick glance at mainly first page and following page(s) if first page interests him. So process of elimination begins with following: * Any CV or resume which is longer than 4 pages will be trashed. This is generally case, unless employer requires a detailed career history. But most CVs are no longer than three pages, and as for resumes they should be shorter. So recruitment manager will not be bothered reading anything over 4 pages. * Any CV or resume that does not have a profile, or objective or similar paragraph and an easy discernible list of skills on front page will get trashed. The recruitment manager does not want to start scanning your CV or resume to see if he can find where your skills and achievements are, or what you are qualified to do. You are supposed to present that to recruitment manager using your career marketing tool, CV or resume. * Any CV or resume which is written in long sentences and lengthy paragraphs and where a quick glance does not allow identification of relevant information, such as skills and achievements will get trashed. The recruitment manager is not there to read essays or novels. * Any CV or resume which is annoying. This is mainly due to bad formatting. Things such as using many different fonts and font sizes, cluttering information with little white space, making it harder to read. Also use of excessive underlining, bold and italics, in combination. All of these matters make CV or resume difficult to read and follow and annoys recruitment manager.
| | How to Choose Your Ideal CareerWritten by Skye Thomas
They say that most people do complete and total career changes at least once often twice in their lifetimes. Very few people chose ideal perfect career for themselves when they're in high school and blissfully happily work those same jobs for rest of their lives. With way that technology and everything else changes so fast, I think it's ridiculous to expect to stay in one job from time you leave school until you retire. Even staying in same company can be a huge challenge. So how will you pick your first career? Your next major career change?The first thing I want you to look at is what kinds of things do you enjoy doing and what you are naturally good at. Imagine that you just won lottery and you will never have to work again for another day of your life. How would you spend your time? After shopping sprees and traveling and such grows old, you're going to have to fill your days up doing something so that you aren't bored out of your mind. What would you do? What would consume your attention if you could freely bury yourself in it? Is there a way to make a living at that now? Is there a way to incorporate some of that into your current career? Could you begin doing it now as a hobby and grow it into a second income and eventually quit your 'real job' to play full time at your new hobby/career? You obviously have to look at practicality issues. Truth be known my very favorite thing to do is drive convertibles and suntan at beach. That's not likely going to ever become a career and it sure as heck isn't going to pay my bills! You have to look at what you like to do and take a realistic look at whether market is ever going to pay you an income for doing it. Just because you love doing something doesn't mean that world is going to love giving you money for doing it. There are plenty of musicians and artists out there who can't earn enough to support themselves. It takes more then just a love of your work. Pick a number of different things that you love and narrow list down by deciding which ones would realistically finance you at level that you require. Another thing to consider, especially when you're choosing your first job is how much education or special training is required. How many kids think that because they love to play basketball that they'll be next Michael Jordan? How many put in kind of work and practice that he did? If you want to be a doctor, then you better seriously contemplate years of college and extremely high cost of going to medical school. Down road, a lot of experience you get in one career can be transferred to your next career. Customer service skills that you learn while waiting tables will still serve you later when you're an entrepreneur. If you have a lot of skills from previous work experience, but not all of them, then you have to figure out how to finance going to night school or whatever else you need to do to change careers. Additional education and skills shouldn't stop you from changing to a great job that you know you'll love, but you do need to take it into serious consideration while making choice.
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