Top Ten Tips For Effective CV Writing

1. One size does not fit all! Don't use exactly the same CV for each job you apply for. Tailor-make your CV to each role, carefully checking the job and person specification in the advertisement. What does the job description ask for and are you able to clearly demonstrate that you meet these requirements?

2. You only have 30-60 seconds to attract the recruiter's attention: You can do this by creating a well written profile that not only illustrates your core experience, but also your transferrable skills to the role you are applying for. Ask someone you trust to read over your profile; in their opinion does your profile effectively represent you?

3. If you are making a complete career change write down the following list:

• Things you are good at

• Things you love to do

• Things someone will pay you to do

Then collate this information to develop a focus in your CV where all these areas can be applied to within a sector you can be really passionate about.

4. Go over your previous roles identifying key achievements: Some examples are detailed below but you will be able to think of areas that specifically apply to your own career:
a) Reaching and exceeding targets set 
b) Implementing systems and processes that improved performance and sales 
c) Winning industry or company awards 
d) Promotion or acting up positions 
e) Winning new clients 
f) Successful completion of projects, perhaps in record time 
g) Loyalty and commitment through difficult times within an organisation 
h) Supporting and motivating colleagues and team members 
i) Training and development of new recruits 
j) Problem solving - give examples 
k) Going the extra mile - give examples

5. Avoid Gimmicks! Of course you want to stand out from the pile of other applicants but as a rule recruiters dislike gimmicks like, fancy formatting, photos, coloured paper etc. Given many companies' hiring procedures you are more likely to be instantly rejected if you do include a photograph.

6. Formatting your CV: Your CV should be printed on A4 sheets, if you are posting your CV rather than emailing it, use good quality paper like Conqueror 80-100gsm in brilliant white. Use a plain font like Ariel, Trebuchet or Times Roman in a 10 or 11 size font. So that the format of your CV is not lost if a recruiter has a older or newer version of word, save as an rtf file or pdf.

7. Don't overdo the length of your CV: No more than 3 pages is an acceptable length, remember you are aiming to grab the attention of the recruiter. This doesn't mean you should cram in as much information as possible to fit it onto 3 pages. Review your CV to ensure you only have core information in it; a recruiter doesn't want to see every duty listed as part of each job.

8. Key words: Having well selected key words in your CV not only catches the recruiter's attention, but is also an effective way to ensure your CV is picked up by the automated systems that recruiters and online job sites commonly use. Research the key words for your industry sector including those in your profile, key achievements and duties.

9. Proof read: There is no excuse for spelling or grammatical errors with spell check and thesaurus that are available on all the main word processing programmes today. After finishing your CV read it out loud; does it naturally flow for the reader? Make sure sentences are not too long. Create sentences that have impact and make a statement. If possible get someone else to read it for you.

10. Cover letter: Finally, your cover letter is the doorway to a recruiter wanting to read your CV. If possible address it to a named person, signing off with 'yours sincerely' to a named individual or 'yours faithfully' to an unnamed addressee. Include some of your successes in your cover letter as bullet points - again this will grab the recruiter's attention.

Copyright The Successful CV Company Ltd

How To Write An Interview Winning CV

One my favourite areas of my coaching business is back-to-work and career development for the clients I work with.

It is an area that is I probably work the most in, certainly at the present time when so many people are finding themselves affected by the current climate and businesses are revaluating their staff numbers.

It doesn’t matter what stage you are at in your career - be it entry level or a senior executive, the one thing you always need is an interview winning CV.

What I find most interesting is that the more senior my clients, the less time they seem to spend on making the most of their CV’s, most likely because they think their experience alone sells them well enough. Your personal summary or statement though on your CV is the first thing a prospective employer will be looking at, in addition to your covering letter.

Primarily you need to catch the recruiter’s attention in the first 60 seconds, so an excellent cover letter is imperative, which is why I extend my CV services to include writing effective and dynamic cover letters which stand out from the pile of applications that land on recruitment agencies and HR department desks.

Think of your CV as the first stage of the interview process. You wouldn’t go to an interview not intent on selling yourself, so don’t hold back when selling yourself on paper.


Personal summaries / Personal Profiles
When writing your personal summary or profile you need to be thinking of yourself as a valuable commodity you are selling. Think about it, if you were selling a pencil, you wouldn’t just say it writes nicely! You would list the complete benefits of that pencil; it has the ability to be amended with an eraser for ease of use, it may incorporate an eraser, it is available in various types of lead – hard or soft, HB grades etc. It can be purchased in multiple packs or as a single item – do you get what I’m saying, even the most simple product can have multiple unique selling points (USP’s), so just imagine how many unique aspects you have as an individual that you can offer your next employer.

A good check list is to ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you a good team player?
• Do you work well in a team and also under your own steam
• Do you motivate and support a team effectively?
• Are you a creative thinker?
• Do you have an entrepreneurial outlook?
• Are you an excellent project manager with an ability to see a task through to the end?
• Are you solutions focussed when problem solving?
• What are your interpersonal and communication skills like?
• Can you work effectively under pressure?
• Do you have a broad skill set, if so what are these?
• What does the job description ask for and are you able to clearly demonstrate that you meet these requirements?
• Are you used to meeting deadlines?
• What are your core strengths?
• What are your weaknesses and how do you compliment these?
• How do you promote best practice in your working environment?

These are key aspects that any new employer will be looking for when they are going through the recruitment process.

Summary of Achievements
For each previous position you have held, whether you were employed or self employed, it is important to bullet point 3-4 specific achievements you reached in EACH role, with the most recent job listed in date order, before you list your duties in that job. Some of the following are indicators of a valuable employee:

• Increasing sales or profitability for your company or department
• Being awarded for success
• Any type of promotion or acting up position
• Implementing new systems or programmes that improved productivity
• Successful completion of projects, perhaps in record time
• Developing new business
• Loyalty and commitment through difficult times within an organisation

Most importantly, don’t embellish your CV to the point that it is not believable or you cannot back it up with specific examples of your achievements. If you are highlighting that you increased productivity for your company, the interviewer is very likely going to ask you how you did this.

No Gimmicks
As much as we like to make our CV’s stand out, recruiters tend to dislike gimmicks when reading CV’s. Photos are debatable; I tend to leave them out unless a prospective employer implicitly asks for them.

You don’t have to include your age; an employer can easily work out your age range by looking at when you were educated and left school, college and university.

Overseas employment
If you are applying for a position out of your homeland, remember to state whether you have visas to work in that particular region and are free to travel.

Keywords
Research the keywords for your industry, most large companies’ HR department have scanning software to review CV’s to quickly pinpoint the most ideal candidates before a human even looks at your CV.

Formatting content
Your CV should be printed on A4 sheets, if you are posting your CV rather than emailing it, try to use good quality paper like conqueror. Use a plain font like Ariel, Trebuchet MS, or Times Roman.

The following content layout is ideal for the recruiter, from beginning to end.

1. Contact details (name, address, country, email, phone numbers)
2. Personal summary
3. Most recent position including date started and finished unless you are still employed, job title, name of company, location of company.
4. 3-4 bulleted Summary of Achievements (important for every job you list)
5. Bulleted Duties in that role (important for every job you list, unless you are going back over 15 years or more than 6 jobs and then you can just list the job title, dates to and from and the company.
6. Next job and so on
7. Education, (Senior school – dates to and from, college – dates to and from, University (if applicable) dates to and from
8. Qualifications (most recent first, detailing grades)
9. Accreditation / Certifications / Training
10. Computer Literacy (detail the packages you are proficient on)
11. Driving licence – whether you hold one and state if it is clean
12. Outside Interests / Hobbies

How long should it be?
The guideline should be that a CV should be no longer than 2 pages but this is unrealistic when someone is of an age with extensive experience in their career. A useful guideline is no longer than 4 pages max. Three pages is an ideal length. Remember you have a cover letter to add further information you want to highlight.

The cover letter

These can vary depending on whether it is a speculative letter or for a specific job. An ideal length is no more than 250-300 words which is including your address in the word count.

• The first sentence or short paragraph should detail the position you are applying for.
• State why you are applying (not just because you need a job!) Give the recruiter a brief overview of why you are ideal for this position, what you can bring to the role, not just what you want from them, why you are interested in their company. In short, detail your professional attributes
• Include brief info on your personal attributes (ie good communicator, excellent interpersonal skills, ability to engage with people of all levels etc)
• Last line of the letter body should indicate that you would welcome the opportunity of discussing this role in further detail at their convenience.

Finally both your CV and cover letter should be PROOF READ CAREFULLY. Its amazing how many people enthuse about their attention to detail and then send an application littered with spelling and grammatical errors. Spell check is available on all word processing packages so there is no excuse for tardiness!

My next post will address preparing for the interview and being an expert at answering difficult questions.

Good luck and don’t forget, believe in yourself and those you meet will also believe in you.

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus 2009

Toxic Friends, You Can't Live With Them, But You CAN Live Without Them!

All true friendships survive with one key element…balance. Without a healthy balance of give and take, trust, commitment, honesty, loyalty and understanding, friendships can be doomed to either fail or just be unhealthy and dysfunctional.

We’ve all in some shape or form, had a toxic friendship or relationship. But what exactly is a toxic friend and how do you recognise when a friendship becomes toxic?

Friendships starting on an equal footing can become dysfunctional when one of you perhaps widens their circle of friends through a new job, a new relationship or maybe just a change in circumstances. The common ground has shifted.

In a healthy friendship or relationship, this should be ok, real friends are happy for you to expand your social life or watch and share the news of the growing success in your career. However, when the other person is threatened by your new situation, they can become resentful and determined to try and keep things static. They may try to jeopardise your new found success and happiness with skilful, yet destructive undertones, anything from subtle criticism to try knocking your confidence, to more obvious ways like out right lying, or creating dramas so they can be the centre of attention.

The following are a useful checklist when assessing whether you have a toxic friendship.

• Do they regularly break their promises or arrangements with little or no notice, giving woefully weak or clearly untrue excuses?
• Are they take, take take, offering nothing or very little in return?
• Are they a drama queen, regularly trying to make you part of their dramas?
• Do they regularly lie about people and situations?
• Have you found out they are talking negatively about you behind your back and betraying your confidences.
• Do they judge you rather than accepting and loving you for who you are?
• Do they try and exert control over your life without taking into consideration what you want?
• Are they generally miserable, trying to take you down with them?
• Do they constantly try to get one up on you?
• Do they try and guilt you for feeling happy?
• Do they see any other friends you have as competition, rather than part of your circle?
• Do you feel worse after spending time with them?

 How do you break free of a toxic friendship?

Toxic friends usually hang on to you like there is no tomorrow, especially when they know the game is up. However, it’s important to stand your ground and not be pulled into old habits as they try and manipulate you further.

Boundaries are a big part of creating and maintaining healthy friendships. When trying to disengage yourself from a toxic friendship, if you don’t feel able to completely walk away, negotiate with yourself what behaviours you are willing to accept by creating a mental or written list of what you are no longer willing to put up with.

Breaking free is of course harder, but when you have made the decision to break free from a dysfunctional friendship or relationship, don’t be manipulated back into it. Expand your social circle by joining groups, clubs and going out with work colleagues, to meet like minded people who make you feel good about yourself.

Be honest and tell them you don’t feel you have anything further in common. Give examples of why you feel this, be specific. Toxic friends usually have deep rooted insecurities that make them behave in the way they do. By giving reasons you are giving them an opportunity to change the way they behave, with view to them making new and healthier friendships with other people.

Reflect on why you were in this friendship, do you yourself have low self esteem, or insecurities that were holding you back on building healthy and functioning friendships. Do these issues make you feel you only have the capacity of being down trodden, rather than existing as a valued and loved individual of equal standing.

Finally, remember we only get from life and those around us, what WE think we deserve, so remind yourself regularly that you deserve only the best.

 Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

Who Do You Think You're Talking To!

A great quote by Carla Gordan goes… “lf someone talked to you the way you talk to yourself , you would have kicked them out of your life a long time ago”.

Its one of my favourite quotes and one that I think everyone should be aware of.

It’s amazing the disrespect we can show ourselves as a matter of habit, if we don’t keep a check on our self talk.

Depending on how we were spoken to by those who influenced us the most as we were growing up, we can carry bad habits throughout our adult lives.

How do you respond when you get something wrong?

Do you admonish yourself automatically, or do you accept your mistake with the grace it deserves and move on?

Are you aware of how you speak to yourself, is it negative or positive?

These are important questions to be aware of in our daily lives. The way you treat yourself, will have an impact on the way other people treat you. How can you expect others to respect you if you don’t respect yourself? Its simple… you can’t!

Changing your language

Imagine if you woke up everyday and sitting at the end of your bed was a person who welcomed you each morning with a positive statement, who made you feel loved, cherished and wanted, wouldn’t that be wonderful! Well that is what you are going to create for yourself everyday, your own champion, your own cheerleader who makes you feel good about yourself and everything you do.

Congratulate yourself on every achievement, it can be anything you do, but from now on you are going to banish every negative thought. In everything you do, give yourself encouraging praise, Sometimes you might find a negative thought creeping in, that’s ok but just replace it with something positive.

Do any of the following sound familiar?

1. I’m fat
2. I hate my job
3. I’m stupid
4. Everyone hates me
5. I’m so unhappy

You are going to STOP speaking negatively about yourself because that’s just plain rude!

We are going to change those negative statements and replace them with postive ones. We are going to change your self talk.

1. I’m learning to love the way I look
2. I’m going to look at ways of improving my career prospects
3. I love learning new things and building my knowledge
4. I am a loved and valued person
5. I deserve to be happy, and I am going to create my own happiness

These statements sound very different don’t they, but this is all you deserve. You don’t deserve to have anyone speaking to you disrespectfully or bringing you down, whether it is yourself or someone else.

From now on when you are about to say something to yourself, remember, STOP

Think about how it sounds, is it negative or postive and then if needed, adapt the message you are giving yourself.

“I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside”. Wayne Dyer

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

Are You Making 2009 A Great Year? You Still Can!

I love the autumn; it is my absolute favourite time. For me it represents the beginning of the closing months of the year; a time to reflect on what has been achieved over the previous year, and settling in for the winter.

January resolutions are all very well and good, I though have always thought they represent unnecessary pressure at the beginning of a fresh new year. Why be so demanding of yourself?

The months of October, November and December are a great time for reviewing how your year has gone so far. Did you fit in everything you wanted to do? Did you achieve everything you had planned to, if not why not?

It’s not a time to admonish yourself but more of a time to create clear pathways for the new road ahead, and get excited with all the possibilities in front of you.

The biggest mistake a lot of people can make with goal planning is having too many goals and not creating the resources needed to achieve them. This in turn generates a sense of failure when the tasks become impossible, and results in de-motivating you.

By reviewing your past year and looking at what you wanted to achieve, did accomplish and were not able to make happen; you can create a clear vision of the areas that had obstacles in them.

I help my clients create an effective way to review their achievements of the past year:-

• List the goals they had set for themselves
• Highlight the ones that were achieved
• Note the steps they took that helped them achieve these goals and what resources they used
• Review the goals that were not achieved
• Detail why they feel they didn’t reach these goals
• What resources did they need that were not available to them, (time, money, motivation etc)
• What steps would they need to take to create those resources?
• Do they want to aim for those goals again and if so, what changes are they going to put in place?

By reviewing your goals, you give yourself a helicopter view of your progress. You are breaking down the steps you made and the obstacles that you met with. This enables you to see clearly what internal and external resources need to be in place to make achieving your goals easier.

Top tips for reviewing your goals

• Don’t be too hard on yourself
• Be realistic on why your goals were not met
• Congratulate yourself on ALL your achievements however large or small
• Stay positive, focussed and motivated – remember, you have the power to make anything happen!

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

Get Your Dream Job!

It’s a difficult market out there right now and competition is tough, so it’s paramount to set yourself apart from the rest.

I’m seeing more and more coaching clients who because of the downturn in the market, are seeking alternative careers.

Any career change has a risk element, but is also an opportunity to reinvent yourself, and focus on skill sets you may not have used, or don’t realise you actually have.

One key advantage the market now has, is that companies are being more adventurous in looking at the transferrable skills prospective employees possess. For example, they know they have a bigger pool of candidates, but in tough economic times there is an indication that they want much more for their money, and are looking at people with a wider skill set, who can work across a number of areas.

This is a key advantage for the job seekers who are looking at changing careers. Everyone has transferrable skills of great use to employers in different industry sectors.

A recent client of mine Alex, had worked in the competitive and highly pressured arena of corporate consulting, for blue chip multinationals. She was feeling pretty burnt out after 25 years focussing on for-profit companies, and wanted to do more in the direction of ‘giving something back’.

Together we focussed on her areas of personal interest, the life/work balance she was now aiming for, and fulfilling her need of doing something for the greater good. We then packaged together her transferrable skills, which included:-

Professional & Personal skill set

• Her ability to meet ever changing needs
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• A well honed resilience working within time- critical environments
• Proven team player
• Having a persuasive and confident nature
• Extensive knowledge and business contacts within blue chip organisations
• A can do attitude, with an ability to communicate at all levels
• Solution focussed, adept at problem solving
• Energetic and enthusiastic.

Whilst there were many other facets to Alex’s skills set, we focussed on common denominators which would package well to prospective employers, in particular the charity sector which Alex was now sure she wanted to move into.

In Alex’s case, these key skills were perfect in marketing herself to charities for corporate fundraising roles. Through assignments I gave her, she was able to target the charities she most wanted to work for, and cold prospected her wish list. Within 9 weeks Alex had had 2 face to face interviews, 3 telephone conversations with senior individuals within 3 different charities, and then last week was offered what she describes as her dream job for one of the UK’s leading charities.

An important aspect of Alex's experience is that these were job opportunities not even advertised. A great example of someone creating their own desired outcome!

Alex made a decision to change, planned a step-by-step route to that change – incorporating specific goals and a time plan, and then executed all of these to reach a successful outcome.

She illustrated the need for making and sticking to a decision, having a well thought out plan and committing to making it happen. It’s interesting to note that Alex fed back to me that initially she thought that it was going to be really hard, but as the plan was forming she realised that it was entirely possible, which only added to her enthusiasm and excitement to her future.

If you are now at a place ready to create change; a simple way to start, is to list items in key areas:

1. The things you love to do
2. The aspects you are good at
3. Your personal qualities
4. Your specific work experience
5. The dream organisations you would want to work for

Then write down how 1+ 2 + 3 + 4 are transferrable to 5.

If you are having difficulties in identifying what you think you are good at and what you think your personal qualities are, then a great exercise is to ask 3-5 friends to write down their opinions of (2) and (3). It’s really interesting the feedback friends can give, and they of course can sometimes know you better than you know yourself. 

Remember, everything just starts as an idea; but only you have the power to nurture it into your own reality.

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus

The Little Ankle Biters Are Leaving Home...Now What?

Its September, the bags are packed, you’ve given them recipes to all your favourite meals, you’ve bought them every student survival book you could get your hands on, and your heart is heavy. How on earth do you survive either your only child or your youngest child going off to university?

We took our son to University today, and whilst he’s going into his second year, I still have a lump in my throat as I write this post.

The house creaks with emptiness, and I wander into his room noticing the empty space where the eagerly used X box used to be...

It’s with such a mixture of pride and sadness that we wave our children off to University, hard to believe that this day has finally come. Unfortunately, gone are the days when we can exert control over their every move and decision. I have it slightly easier though than my sister, whose daughter my bright, talented and beautiful niece, (possibly a biased aunt!) Starts her first year at university this month.

In the midst of the empty spaces that our children leave behind though, are a new world of opportunities for the parents left behind. This doesn’t have to be the end, but the beginning of so much more. We now have the time (and possibly more money!) to start and concentrate on ourselves again; after years of being parents we can now begin to remember what it was like being individuals.

For me, it means I can explore hobbies and pursuits I’ve had my eye on for years, photography, horse riding again, learning to paint, writing a blog and catching up with friends, who admittedly I’ve probably been a bit lax in keeping in touch with. The world is so very different from when before I had a child, for a start, the Internet didn’t exist. Now so much more is accessible, and I fully intend to grasp every possibility out there.

It’s a transition though; our children leaving home, but it should hopefully be a transition process for you with the excitement of ‘what now’? It’s important to remember that it isn’t the first time you’ve let them go. You’ve already done that when they went to nursery, started secondary school and with their inevitable requests for more space and independence as they were growing up.

Remember, you’ve given your children the 2 most important elements for a healthy start in life, roots and wings. It’s now up to them, with your continuing love and support for them to go out into the world and use those gifts.

A few tips for surviving the empty nest:

• Think about the things you perhaps wanted to do over the years but were not able to pursue because of parental commitments.
• Keep busy – there are probably loads of things around the house you’ve been planning to do but never had the time for.
• Spend time with friends and like mind people who are perhaps going through the same transition.
• It’s easy to want to bombard your child with emails and phone calls, but they will undoubtedly be enjoying their new sense of freedom. Find out when is the best time to have a catch up chat and don’t take it personally when they are perhaps too busy to talk sometimes – remember they are having fun exploring their new life!

And finally, find time to sit back and swell with pride, thinking about the amazing young person you have raised and give yourself a big pat on the back!

Copyright Elizabeth Bacchus