The CV is dead!

As a marketing tool the CV is dead. It is no more…. This may come as a bit of a shock to some people, but the CV / résumé that you have been working may not be as important as you thought it was. 50 years ago you could send your CV to the company and hope that it would get you the job. But times have changed since then, so don’t rely on the CV to get you the job. It won’t. Focus on your career story and your digital profile to get noticed. After all, you only get one chance to make a first impression.

Don’t rely on the CV

Marketing and the way that we communicate our message is very different in the internet era. Whether you are applying for an advertised role, engaging with an executive search firm, or making direct contact with a potential employer via someone in your network, it’s your personal narrative (your career story) or your LinkedIn profile / personal website (your digital story) that people will turn to. The CV is a useful list of facts and dates that somebody can refer to once they’ve decided that you are a potential candidate for the role, but you should probably focus on your career story, your LinkedIn profile and your personal website if you want to get noticed.

List of facts and dates

The CV helps the interviewer to check exactly what it was that you did and when you did it. They don’t want to read all about what the company does or what the share price was (unless you were personally responsible for driving the share price as CEO), so stick to the facts and dates of what you did (not what the team around you did), when you were in which role, and what was the job that you were appointed to do. Keep it short and keep it factual.

Make sure the CV is easily readable

A fancy CV with different colours and boxes and fancy slogans may look good to you, but none of these things is going to make the CV more readable. The reader may be ploughing through dozens or even hundreds of CVs and they’re looking for easily identifiable milestones and achievements. The use of bullet points will help the reader to find what they’re looking for.  Fancy language or long sentences don’t serve any useful purpose (it’s unlikely that the interviewer is going to be hiring you for your writing skills!). Keep it simple.

Focus on your achievements

Executive search firms are bombarded with CVs; what they want to be able to do is to see what you did. What was your mandate in that particular role? What were you hired to do? And what were your specific achievements? If you grew the revenue by 30% in a certain period, make that one of your key bullet points. Maybe you reduced the cost structure, increased market share, or improved business processes to help the company hit certain targets. Whatever your achievements in the role, make sure these stand out. And please don’t over-sell yourself. Nobody wants to read about you being a “dynamic leader” or an outstanding communicator. These soft skills will be judged at interview or via referencing, not in the CV.

Instinctively you may feel that your CV doesn’t quite convey who you are. If you’re not sure, get in touch and we can take a look.

Anthony Harling

Managing Partner, Archer Mann

anthony@archermann.com