Helping someone find their perfect role is so rewarding, it’s one of the most fun parts of the job. It’s literally what gets us out of bed in the morning. As recruiters, we spend most of our time talking to people, finding out their wants and needs, and exploring their career history, experience, and aspirations. Once we have truly got to understand a person’s unique circumstances in detail, we can try to guide a candidate and advise how they can improve their job searching. Job hunting is a huge deal, it takes a lot of work, so we’ll do our best to help lighten the load. At Benchmark we bring a plan to your hunting.
There’s a lot of good advice that we can pass on. Sometimes, that might include ignoring advice! In this blog, we share some of the bad advice we’ve heard that people have received that we recommend you ignore.
“If it’s not relevant to the role you’re applying for, leave it off your CV.”
We disagree – We want to see your experience as a whole. We want to see you, the person as a whole. Yes, maybe you don’t need an exhaustive list of duties for roles that aren’t relevant to this position, but we still want to know what your background is. It’s also nice to see how someone has progressed. If it’s important to you it may be relevant. The thing you think is irrelevant, may just be the thing that creates a connection between you and the employer.
“If you weren’t at a company for more than a year, leave it off your CV.”
Times have changed, It’s not the end of the world if a role didn’t work out, get it on there. Show everybody how you turned a negative situation around. How did you turn this into an opportunity? If there’s a gap on your CV, it’s more than likely that you’ll be asked about it anyway so there’s absolutely no reason to leave it out. Be brave!
If you’re worried that a short-term role will look bad, there’s nothing wrong with adding the reason you left – but do try not to be negative about your previous employers. That is not a good look!
“Keep your CV to two pages.”
Although it’s definitely sound advice not to ramble, there’s no specific need to limit the info on your CV and squeeze it onto two pages. If you have a long work history, try to keep the roles at the start of your career a little more concise and focus on the details in the relevant ones.
“Don’t include a skills list/overview.”
If you’re looking for a role that requires specific skills or technical ability, you should include a skills list on your CV…as long as it’s relevant to your current experience. If you read an article on C++ development at University 6 years ago, but never worked with it commercially, leave it off. The whole point of it is so that employers can see a quick overview of your skills and experience before reading your CV in more detail.
There are a plethora of things we may advise you NOT to do, but these are the ones that we hear the most often. Your CV should be a clear representation of your working history and we’d never tell you to leave things off of your CV. You never know what might catch someone’s attention!
Here at Benchmark, we’re always happy to help guide and advise you on how to put your CV together and answer any questions you might have. Whether your CV just needs a bit of a spruce up or if you haven’t updated it in years, we’re here to help!