Write an attention
grabbing profile for your CV
OK, so lets face it, reading through applications
and CV's probably isn't the most exciting thing your prospective
employer is going to do today. Combine this with the fact that
in today's market, an employer can receive hundreds of CV's for the
choicest jobs and you can imagine how they are likely to be read.
Applying for a job through Sage People will give you a better
opportunity to have your CV read, as employers know we will only
send them relevant CV's. However, a poorly written CV will
still only be quickly scanned, so they may miss some key attributes
you can bring to their business. So what can we do to improve
your chances of standing out?
The answer, is to write an attention grabbing
profile at the top of your CV!
The job of your profile is to create enough
interest in an applicant that the employer will WANT to read on.
It does not make references to the specific vacancy, but, is a
condensed version of a covering letter, including some key skills
and attributes. There are three key components to focus on:
First, start off with an opening sentence, this
should be based around your general experience over a period of
time. An opening phrase such as "With over 10 years working
with Sage technologies......" try not to break this down into a
niche area, this will come later in the CV.
Second, focus on some of your key skills, this
will make an employer aware of what you could do for them, terms
such as "customer-facing", "in-depth understanding" and "new
business development" should work fine here.
With your background established you can now look
to the future. If you do not have this cast in stone it's
fine, but a general positive step forward is what's required.
Terms like "seeking to develop my career in the field of...." or
"looking for a new challenge" are the kind of thing employers like.
Now that you have the bare bones you can consider
the skills you can bring to an organisation, along with adding a bit
of personalisation. You should end up with something along
these lines:
"Having a total of seven years’ experience in
sales and am an ambitious and self motivated individual with
excellent interpersonal skills. Outstanding presentation and
negotiating ability, has enabled me to build and maintain strategic
alliances with major hardware vendors and blue chip organisations
throughout the UK, This experience has also given me an in-depth
understanding of the mechanics of businesses."
OK, yes I know it's not specific to a Sage role,
but we don't want every second CV we receive, having the example
above cut and paste into it!
If you give it some careful thought and tweak it
every now and then to suit the type of jobs you apply for, your profile will
make you sound well organised and a great communicator. In
simple terms, it's the part of your CV that makes sure the rest of
it is read!
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