A Job You Love

Do you know that many written CVs are fake or have been changed?

On your CV is everything true?

Your on-line CV is much more accurate than your written CV. Why?

Because on Linkedin or Viadeo, you are in touch with your ex colleagues, ex bosses or ex clients…and they know your position and what you were doing. So you can’t pretend being a marketing director whereas you were working as a Marketing manager. When connecting with you, they will look at your profile.

People would spot you are cheating on your CV straight away…what kind of credibility or trust would you have?

CVs online are ruled by peer pressure which means CVs are under the eye of your ex colleagues and you can’t lie too much. Your lies could be seen by everybody.

Especially if you google your name, your linkedin/viadeo profile appears in the first page!

In that context, CVs online tend to be more accurate than the written ones which are only seen by the recruiter or the hiring manager.

Written CVs can be slightly changed or even faked…as long as only one person looks at it…but if it is a whole bunch of people, the risk of being uncovered is much larger.

Conclusion: recruiters use more and more Linkedin and Viadeo to find candidates as it is a free and trustworthy source of candidates.

What do you wait for?

Sabrina Saccoccio created a new kind of CV, the CV-like facebook page.

And it is quite creative and powerful. I am a big fan of new kind of CVs (see my WHAT IS A CV IN 2010?).

The good things about this kind of CV:

- She shows creativity

- She creates a buzz on the internet

- She shows that she understands how to communicate

- She showcases her skills in a light manner and is able to grab the recruiter’s attention

- She has put many recommendations which is something I like, it shows her professional credibility in the industry

The points at risk:

- Sometimes recruiters may think it is too much, it is funny and it creates buzz, but is it serious?

- Information is a bit difficult to sort out as her work experience is in the second page on the left side

- Too much humor is not funny anymore?!

I really think that for her industry (she is a TV, radio print and web producer), it is an efficient tool and a very much creative CV. It grabs attention and creates buzz, and a positive one!

And this is the main purpose of a CV: being targeted! If you don’t craft a CV with the end goal in mind, it won’t work. It will be the usual boring CV (see Why your CV is boring and ineffective).

Here is another way to use social media and overcome the boring side of the CV!

And you, would you do a facebook CV?

When you look for a job, you send emails. And when you send emails, you send emails to unknown people or to HR people willing to get the ball rolling.

But do you know that these people are flooded with emails?

“A survey of 2,300 Intel employees revealed that people judge nearly onethird of the messages they receive to be unnecessary. Given that those same employees spend about two hours a day processing e-mail (employees surveyed received an average of 350 messages a week, executives up to 300 a day).”

300 emails /day!!

Everytime you send an email, it has to be personal, focused and targeted. In the header, you need to say that you are contacting the person on the behalf of someone she knows otherwise you run the risk of never being read.

When you send a speculative email, it needs to be focused and targeted with something special in it talking about the person you are contacting.

When you network, when you send connection requests, when you send loads of emails, think about what happens on the other side…Will you be read? and What does it say about your brand?

Emailing is an easy way to connect and contact, but it can trick people and harm their job search.

Is social networking the eldorado for recruitment? A lot is being said about social networking for recruiters but at the end of the day, everybody use social media to communicate but we don’t have real figures about the recruitment side of it.

What is the outcome? We all hear stories about a guy who found a job using twitter or another one using another social network but at the end of the day, it seems to be an illusion, news and media can distort reality.

These stories are still exceptions…

I read that study about Sources Of Hire 2009, and the authors explained that “Social Media, while rapidly expanding as a strategy, is still in its early stages vis-à-vis attributed hires.”

The direct use of social networks to recruit and find people is still at its early stage. So why all the fuss about social media as a way to recruit?

Cheap and easy are two words that come to my mind and obviously the trend…Yes social media is trendy so everybody talk about it. And twitter and linkedin make a lot of noise. It is funny because the articles that generate more buzz are the articles about Linkedin/twitter. Social media like to talk about…social media!

But you still need to consider social media as a way to communicate, share and participate…to be visible and leverage your contacts (Which can eventually lead to a job). Being recruited is a consequence of your strategy to develop your reputation and visibility.

It is hard work and it takes time, but do it for yourself and do it before losing your job.

What is a CV in 2010 (click on the link do download it!)

- You will find suprising figures

- You will find a model of CV in 2009 and a model of CV in 2010

- You will find ideas on how to develop your reputation and how to write a new CV!

Share it, criticize it, love, hate it, whatever but leave a comment on changes I should make.

For those who are doubtful about the figure “80% of companies used linkedin in 2008 as the primary source of recruitment”, here is the source, Jobvite Social Recruitment Report.

Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/laurentbrouat

Yesterday night I was watching a show on BBC called “the Restaurant” and I have been watching it since the beginning.

It is a show where 9 couples go through tests to see if they are able to set up their own restaurant. And on their way, they are evaluated by 3 professionals of the restaurant industry.

And as a recruiter I failed.

I spotted a couple, JayJay and James, and from the outset, I found them arrogant, even cocky, and one of the guy could not cook. So to me they did not even deserve to be here.

But weeks after weeks, they went through everything, they showed adaptation and marketing acumen, and the guy who was supposed not to cook learnt on the job. Towards the end of the show, they appeared less and less arrogant.

So what? As a recruiter I would have eliminated Jay Jay and James straight away without spotting the potential of the pair.

And Why that? Because they were arrogant and too much confident for my taste.

It is what we call in the recruitment industry, to be biased, I had a negative bias about these guys and all my thinking was completely distorted. I could not see any good things in their  personality or their capability.

As a recruiter you need always to address these distortions of reality that make you like or hate a candidate without any specific or even rational reasons. You need to get rid of it otherwise you gonna recruit the wrong person or miss a person with a potential (a positive bias is called Halo Effect and and the reverse is the Devil effect, when a single weak point influences all the perception of the person).

The solution? Be aware of this danger and ask yourself, why you don’t like this candidate.

And you as a candidate, don’t forget that sometimes recruiters can rule you out…just because they don’t like you. With no reasons apart from that you look something they don’t like (may be you are a Manu fan or you like the wrong things!).

But I must say that gut feeling can be right as well…as long as you are aware of it.

So now Jay Jay and James are in the final 3, and they showed an enormous sense of adaptation and a real touch for business. They showed that I was wrong from the outset and that any recruiter can fail because of a negative bias. They seemed too confident for me, and I did not like it!

Good luck to Jay Jay and James, may I be wrong once again.

When people come to me the 1st thing they ask is: “Here is my CV/Resume, what can you do? Can you change it?”

Like in a house, you don’t start building a house with a roof, but you start with the foundations.

So 1st thing 1st is to resist to the immediate expectation of the client…”no we won’t work on your CV right now”.

That’s the moment you need to explain why.

So why your CV is the roof of your house?

Because before doing anything we need to understand who you are (values, passions) and your skills.

These are the foundations of your house. Once we have laid down the foundations, we start putting the walls (sorry my metaphor about a house construction is not accurate but I think everybody got it).

Understanding who you are and what you have done will allow us to identify the main points in your life that we can relate to your CV. The better you and I will understand your skills and personality, the more solid the foundations will be.

Now putting the walls is to understand what you want to do, what is your project?

Your roof needs to be supported by solid walls otherwise the roof will collapse. So identifying your project is key because a CV without target is like a chicken without head…you go all over the place, or translated on your CV, you put all the information you can hoping for the best.

So a roof without walls does not exist, as a CV without a clear target.

So a roof well built will protect you from the rain and any severe weather condition, as a well built CV will protect you from any crisis…

But never forget to start with the foundations first and the walls…otherwise your house won’t stand against any wind

Writing a CV without understanding your skills/strengths and without a clear target in mind is a waste of time.

I have been reading CVs lately and I am always surprised by the lack of punchy sentences at the beginning of CVs. Recruiters don’t spend more than 10-20 seconds reading your CV, so you need to grant some time to do your profile properly.

So what is a good profile?

Actually let’s start with a boring profiles on 90% of the CVs I come across.

Most of CVs have this kind of profile:

“I am a committed and rigorous person who strives to achieve the best results. I am strongly motivated by the media industry and I hope to integrate a high profile company”

It is boring, nothing special, you put auto affirmative adjectives (rigorous,  committed…) without proving anything! It does not add anything! Anybody could do the same.

So what is the rule?

a)  State your years of experience

b) Highlight a great achievement in your last job or related to the job you are applying for

c) The reason why you are the right person

Now let’s redo the CV according to those rules:

Senior marketing manager (I love to put a title)

• 10 years of experience in the media industry especially 5 years at BBC
• The product, Imedia, I developed got 10% of market share in 2008 which represents 10 million £ of sales

• I want to work for your company because of my knowledge in the marketing development in the media industry and my experience in the B2C market

So what? What do you think? Which profile would you pick up between both?

The example I gave you landed a job to my client when we rewrote her profile.

You need to have a selling and punchy profile with the best of what you can offer, and PLEASE spare us with the boring profile we always come across!

I have been giving career reviews at Forum 3 since yesterday and I met so many different people from young graduates to mature people.

But one case struck me more than others.

This girl is in her early twenties and holds a degree in Accounting from another country and now is following courses to have a master in Finance in the UK.

When she came to see me, she asked me what kind of job she could do.

She has been studying a couple of subjects for almost 5 years and was not sure of what she could do.

I asked her if she had friends in her classroom or was sharing ideas with her teachers…but nothing.

She told me that she was only studying and was not talking to any of her colleagues or teachers. So what?

She is a foreigner in a country and does not talk to anybody, she does not know what she can do after her graduation. She doesn’t share ideas, thoughts, tips, advice.

She is socially isolated and it is a real issues for a young person in her situation.

So my piece of advice was simple: just go out and talk to your colleagues/students, teachers, ask them what they want to to.

Social isolation is a big issue for job seekers,

Looking for a job when you are alone in front of your computer the whole day is something I am fighting against every single day with my clients.

But her case is much worse because she doesn’t speak to anybody.

Sometimes we need to come back to the basics: look around you, open up, share your thoughts, talk about your situation to the people around you.

Starting with your circle of friends/peers may help you a lot, it is a simple step but an important one in many cases.

Networking is only about talking to people you know.

In my previous post I explained why I think Your CV is boring and ineffective
The CV is boring because it is a list of duties and it is so boring to read for a recruiter, and it is statistically inefficient because now all the recruiters receive hundreds of CVs for each position advertised so your odds of getting a job through the “normal” market is quite low.

Just to give you more insight I will quote this part of the book of Seth Godin:
“Odds are that the last time you switched jobs, you used a resume. Following conventional wisdom, you may have sent it to hundreds or thousands of employers. You may have posted it online or emailed it in an effort to “network” your way to a new job.
All of this effort is really nothing but advertising. Advertising in a way that’s very different from buying TV ads, but also very similar. After all, your resume is likely to land on the desk of someone with no interest whatsoever in you or what you are up to. Worse, it’s unlikely that this strategy will lead to much word of mouth.”

So instead of spreading your CV all over the place, you should target and network beforehand, and be sure of your target.
Is he the decision taker?
If I receive a CV through a friend or a recommendation, I will likely read it.
You just need to have a different approach to job search. Instead of “all day CVs sending”, you should put your head out and target specific organizations with a customized CV.

Meet with people who will give you more details and more information about the market.
In other words, stop spreading CVs like headless chicken, you will spare a lot of headache to recruiters!!!

The less CV you send, the more effective you will be.

What does that mean?

1)        you will send only VERY focused cvs
2)        you will spend more time out networking and identifying your targets and their needs
3)        you won’t spend too much time with recruitment agencies which are time wasters as    they are paid to keep all the candidates possible
4)        you won’t devaluate your CV by sending it like a leaflet all over the place
5)        you don’t spend your day sitting on a chair in front of a computer

And frankly who believes in that current climate that you can find a job just sitting in a chair and sending emails?
So instead of interrupting recruiters and unknown people, try to meet them through a proper networking process. And if they hear from you because of your expertise, even better!

And I can add that in the long run, networking and developing your brand as an expert is much more efficient than sending CVs, it is a safety net against unemployment and any crisis…and obviously you can earn more.
I must confess that it is a longer process (proper networking takes 3 months instead of a whole morning sending CVs) but it is much more effective!!

And generally speaking, job seekers are less scared to spend their time sitting on a chair sending CVs than going out and speaking to people. It is so much easier to opt for the “all internet day”…We don’t test our comfort zone, we just do what is easy.
Think efficiency, so stop the “I will send my CV to all over the world so maybe one of the recruiter will take this skill from my CV”.

The current environment forces you to change the way you are looking for a job, and it is very beneficial to you as you will develop new habits, not short term habits (send a cv and cover letter, land a job with the best offer) but long term habits for your career (develop a network of people who will support you, develop your brand and your name, adopt new habits as writing or speaking, and choose a job that is in line with your objectives).

After reading the book of Seth Godin, Purple Cow…several ideas and thoughts came to my mind. In this book, Seth Godin explains that companies need to be remarkable to be successful nowadays…beforehand companies could create boring products and put a lot of ads on TV, and that was pretty much it! And It was working well!

Now the audience is more demanding, has less time and the number of choice is bigger…so you need to be remarkable to get noticed. You need to create a purple cow (because all the “normal” cows are white, black or brown but not purple…) to be remarkable. You also need to be focused on a niche and not selling everything to everyone. You need to focus your money and work on a small niche of sneezers or early adopters who will spread the word.

For the CV it is the same.

A cv is a 2D document made of a boring listing of duties and responsibilities. As a recruiter, I have seen hundreds of CVs, I can tell you, it is all the same. And those that are noticed are not noticed for the right reasons (fantasy font, colors, funny pictures). And even if we need to follow certain rules, people forget that CVs are here to show skills and demonstrate them ie prove your skills. They put a job description of their current job on their CV instead of putting figures or quoting some successful case studies.

But back in the days, you just needed to send a CV and it was working well… I do remember my father telling me he just sent a written CV by mail and got 2 interviews the following week (in the 70s). The number of educated people using CVs was quite low, the word to mouth technique was widespread. So the CV was a very efficient tool.

Now it does not work so much. The number of people with degrees and education background has exploded over the past decade, and everybody uses a CV whether you are a banker or a plumber. The consequence of that is that Recruiters are inundated with CVs. Every time a recruiter puts a job ad, he receives hundreds of CVs from all over the world. So he has less time to scout every CV and your possibilities of standing out are quite reduced.

When I was recruiting, the button I was using more on my keyboard was “delete”! So the CV is not anymore an efficient tool, it is quite boring to read. It is a “normal” cow, you won’t be remarkable just using a CV.

The other lesson from this book is that you need to focus when elaborating your CV. You can’t only put everything you have done and hope for the best…you need to be specific and find a niche or a market to stand out. If you put generic things without giving any life to your CV it will be even worse. If you want your CV to look less ineffective and boring, you need to put some life on your CV ie figures, your trademark, your speciality, for example I specialized in coaching financial executives.

But please give some life to your CV, and obviously always respecting the basic rules. And you need to know who is going to be your target to customise your CV accordingly. Just one word for the CV: focus, focus, focus!

I will come back to the CV and why so many CVs are just not well written. So if the CV is boring and ineffective, what should you do? There are different options to promote you without even using a CV. But it will the subject of another post!!