One of the most common questions I still get asked a lot is how can I make my CV stand out when I’m applying for positions? I get asked it so often that we made a presentation and podcast about it – Differentiating Yourself in the Marketplace. You can have a listen to the detailed answer with practical things to do so here’s some food for thoughts
The number one thing to do to stand out with your CV in the current marketplace is make it relevant
Relevance is a fully old thing – relevant to who? Indeed what does relevance even mean? In this posting we’re talking about making your CV relevant to the person reading it, the job you’re applying for, the role you currently perform and then making it still stand out or having a distinctiveness about it so we can distinguish it from another.
Two audiences
Before putting a CV or application together its worth remembering that different audiences are going to be reading and trying to understand more about you from your CV. These are roughly two types – people who understand project management and those that don’t. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a moment and take a look at your CV again, ask yourself the questions; do I need a course in project management to understand my CV? Am I giving just enough information about what I do to make it readable for a wide range of audiences? Would a line manager (experienced in project management) and an HR recruiter both be interested and act upon my application?
It’s not impossible to do – just think about different audiences when you’re putting the CV together – keep them in your mind’s eye.
Standing Out is Not Difficult
I’ll let you into a secret, it’s not that hard to stand out and you don’t need to do very much at all – why? Because most people are terrible at writing a CV. Most people just write one CV and keep it for ever more, just adding the new jobs they’ve carried out as they go through their career – the same old CV with bits stuck on.
To stand out for every role you apply for you need to make sure the CV changes. How can one CV be relevant to all the project management positions you’re potentially interested in applying for? Where one job advertisement has an emphasis on stakeholder management and budgets and another on large-sized virtual team management it’s not rocket science to see that a few changes to your CV to put emphasis on certain areas makes perfect sense.
Different Project Management Roles Means Different Relevance
As a general thumb of rule – standing out will mean different things to different people. Take a project office or support role. To really do a great job with your CV you need to focus on more details around the tasks you perform. It’s not good enough to just state you carry out project reporting – we want to see how, what do you use, what types of reporting, what process etc etc. With project managers there should be a balance between tasks and outcomes, we need to be able to see that there is skill and experience in how you manage project delivery, how you control risk etc as well as the outcome. In other words just stating the benefits of project X were achieved within budget, time…. yawn. With programme managers there needs to be seniority within the CV, complexity is managed, the strategic understood as well as programme delivery.
The bottom line is standing out means show me you have the skills, capability, knowledge, experience, qualifications, training, and gravitas for this particular post – at this level of complexity, risk, salary and reward. Make your CV and application relevant, tailored and compelling enough and you’ll be in the top percentage of people who regularly receive leads and interviews.
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Image – Brian Marshall