It has been widely documented that a recruiter will be able to make a decision on viewing a C.V. in about 6 seconds. When I read this it made me realise that while most people have the experience that is required, quite often they won’t have the C.V. that translates.

I’m sure my fellow recruiters out there will agree, if I had a dollar the amount of times a candidate has shown promise, only to be let down by their C.V., I’d have enough to buy a lifetime of avocado on toast (or maybe even a house, who knows?). With the level of clients that we deal with, many of these are simply not good enough to showcase a candidate.

For your assistance, I’ve compiled together the top 3 tips from recruiters look for improving your C.V.

There have been many times that I’ve been interviewing a candidate to see if they’re right for a role, and they write on their C.V. something like: “was first in sales”. This is such a great thing to say, but the trouble is: “could you elaborate on that?” isn’t something you want to be asked in an interview. When you’re writing and reviewing your C.V., try to be as specific as possible about the actual results you got. I had a client recently reach out to me and ask me if I had any candidates that had achieved a specific result in digital media accounts management. As it turns out, I did find someone that had achieved those specifics. They got the role. Be specific (even though I understand the irony considering that story was quite vague).

Following on from the above statement, the whole concept behind demonstrating your results is to showcase that the company will get an R.O.I. on hiring you. Though that isn’t a pleasant way to look it, companies are actually making a lot of investment into you when they hire you. Not only are we looking at salary, but we are also talking in lead time for recruitment, training, and all the other stuff that candidates don’t really see.

It’s so important to be able to build a sense of confidence in you for clients to buy in to the idea of hiring you. You need to use irrefutable facts to state why you were a worthwhile candidate. If it’s not something with numbers, make sure that it can be backed up by a colleague or manager.

The most frustrating thing as a recruiter to see, is a C.V. that is reams of paper long. What a waste of a tree, people! The most important thing about any C.V. is to make every single word count. No matter what your C.V. contains, just make sure that every word counts.

Oh, and before I forget. Make sure that your C.V. documents all your movements, within a company and outside of a company. This is often a talking point amongst hiring managers, and it’s important to be able to talk about times that you did move up (which is good), or times that you moved out (which is an automatic red flag if you don’t mention why).