Just like a tiny acorn contains the power to grow into a mighty oak tree, a good CV has the power to grow into a great Career tree….
Curriculum Vitae (or CV for short), means the story of your life. Writing a CV that has the potential to be shortlisted and or make a positive impact is a skill and needs a lot of expertise. Most professionals underestimate the significance of writing a powerful CV. To the extent, that sometimes it’s given the least importance in order of priority, when one is making career moves.
Let’s look at the psychology of selection here. A recruiter or a hiring manager is a human being who like all other human beings is driven by emotions. It's a well established fact that human decisions in any walk of life are more emotional than rational, the same applies to building a CV. You have to learn to make a connect to the prospective recruiters/hiring managers. In the selection process element of human biases will never be completely eliminated. It can be an opportunity if you are smart enough to crack this psychological code. This is where an intelligently built CV can help.
Why a powerful CV?
Building a powerful CV is akin to building a personal brand. A good CV is like a positioning tool to right-position and promote your personal brand. It's the first touch point with your prospective recruiters and hence needs to be handled smartly and with great degree of care. It helps you get an edge in a highly competitive and crowded selection process and can help for right career changes or upward movements. Last but not the least, a smart CV will create a favourable mental predisposition with your interview panel and allow the interview discussion to be steered in the direction you want it to go.
This, to me, is very critical for interviewers and interviewees alike, as too much time is wasted in trying to find faults/gaps, interrogate or indulging in a surface level show of one's knowledge and capabilities. It’s vital that the words used in your CV really make the reader want to meet you and to invite you to that all-important interview.
Your CV is your sales document to a recruiter/employer and if it fails to sell you then it will probably end up in the bin and hence no interview. Having said that let me also share a balancing perspective.
Your personal brand strategy and the criticality of building a good CV depends on the demand - supply situation as well. When I did a dip stick research on the various job ads and interviewed recruiters it became very clear that there were some entry level jobs that they wanted to fill up at any cost, not focusing too much on the quality.
Most organisations are realising the perils of taking this approach through productivity losses caused due to dis engagement, attrition and mis casting (fitment issues). I can thus stick my neck out and claim that this approach will meet its end very soon. A lot of people (especially senior managers and successful professionals) don’t often given importance to building a good CV.
‘Too good for my CV’
Networks and their track record seems to be more than enough, for them to get what they want from their career moves. This is a huge mis conception, which works at times, but not always.
CV is like a brand statement and it does the rounds beyond the audience you expected to target , and thus builds a perception about you. It helps build your Constituency, outside of your immediate network. It remains a potent and powerful tool to attract the right audience for the right reasons and hence is all the more critical if you are senior, and are doing well.
The ground rules
A good CV should never be one-dimensional and hence you cannot take a “Single-version fits all” approach. It’s important to research the organisation and the role you are applying for. The company web site and other public domain information do offer some important cues. They will help understand some key themes that should show up in your CV. Build multiple versions of your CV, suited to the relevant industry, organisation, role, etc. It makes an immediate impact.
Another key learning from the study of behavioural economics is that Brand recall is not just a factor of the best features, price etc, but the ability to build an emotional connect with the consumer. In this context, your personal brand needs to make that connection with the prospective recruiter. Thus, highlighting the 'right' things and managing around the gaps/non strengths will be critical. This is not a manipulative process but a subtle attempt to position your best self, authentically, while not concealing any important facts.
Examine the job ad carefully. It usually contains some vital information regarding the role deliverables and the expected skill, knowledge and experience profile. Also most ads will describe certain personality attributes that the organisation feels, will help the person succeed in their set up.
There is an entire school of thought which discounts the value of this information provided, especially regarding the personality attributes, and most CV’s ignore this. You can so easily differentiate yourself by weaving these themes/attributes into the way you are describing your self and your experience, skills, etc.
It, for sure is the least emphasised aspect and needs some skills and effort, but can pay huge dividends in creating strong brand equity. Explain your Strengths smartly and clearly.
Positive psychology based approach offers you better chances of success. This usually is a tough process and my review of over 5000 CV’s clearly tells me that most people do a pretty shoddy job of this.
Understanding your differentiating strengths and being able to clearly articulate the same, needs effort and skill, and this is very often the last mile that most people are not able to run.
Let’s not forget what Peter Drucker said: “Most people feel that they know what their strengths are and they are mostly wrong.” This is an aspect of self awareness and introspection that matters a lot. You need to be able to master this.
Finally, the most critical success factor is around your CV’s ability to steer attention to your “best self” or your key strengths. This is the most important aspect of your CV and needs the most attention.
A common mistake is when aspirants over sell themselves or underplay their capabilities. You need to be conscious and intelligent to position yourself rightly.
The best way to do this is to weave your key skill, knowledge, experience and personality strengths while explaining your major achievements/successes. This strategy is a lot more powerful that just churning out reams of paper explaining all the great work that you have done and then somewhere in a remote, non descript section of your CV, trying to explain your strengths etc. Most CV’s lack connectivity and alignment of perspectives. Thus it’s critical to understand that your CV is your Brand eventually and helps a lot of people understand your “Value proposition.”
It definitely has a huge psycho-emotive dimension to it and hence needs to be managed well. The CV has to be authentic as it makes a “brand promise” which you will need to fulfil during the interview process and more importantly when you start performing in your ‘dream’ role. It can be the big difference between Success and Failure…
The writer is from Enterprise Consulting and Leadership Development - The Gallup organisation. To contact email: lalitkhanna16@gmail.com.
