The Importance of CVs and Resumes

Studies have shown that a recruitment manager spends on average 10-15 seconds to decide whether to reject a CV or put it into the shortlist. 

On average employers can receive between 100 – 300 CVs for each position advertised. These will be narrowed down to around 20-30 CVs and from this selection between 4-12 will be called for an interview. This indicates the great importance attached to your CV. Hence, your objective is to create a CV that does not get discarded at the initial “glance” stage, then passes the review stage and lands you an interview. If you are not getting enough interviews this shows that your CV needs to be rewritten as it is being discarded. You need to make sure you present your skills and experiences in the right way to catch the employers attention. Only when you start landing interviews for your desired jobs will you know that you have created your CV successfully. 

Creating a Good CV or Resume Takes Time

In order to remember your full range of skills, achievements and experiences that have been acquired over numerous years, it will take you some time. Sometimes you will not remember achievements or experiences that are highly significant to the job you are seeking. And if you have already prepared your CV you might be tempted to leave out significant new information which might grab the attention of the employer. It may take you many hours or sometimes even a couple of days to remember everything.

Taking the time out to audit yourself fully provides lots of benefits. One of those benefits is greater confidence in interviews. If your CV is weak, the interviewer will ask you questions based on information that presents you weakly. Whereas if your CV is strong, the interview will ask questions based on information that presents your image strongly. Therefore, straight away, your CV determines how your image is presented and it will influence the nature and direction of the interview. 

Employers must recognise what you are qualified for at first glance

This is an excellent benchmark by which you can gauge the successfulness of your CV or resume. It should be very easy for an employer to immediately recognise exactly what you are qualified for when glancing at the CV or resume for a few seconds. This is usually achieved by a combination of a profile or objective statement which opens the CV or resume and the various job titles or skill headings you have chosen which should be relevant and matched to the required skills for the job. The job titles or skill headings should stand out in bold text.

Take a look at your CV or resume, and glance at it for five seconds (about the same time the potential employer would want to take to know what you can offer them). Do you think that the employer is able to immediately discern as to what you are qualified for and be able to match your experience to his requirements? If not, then you need to revise and improve your document.

The following factors may need to be considered: job titles – are they relevant or not? the layout of the CV of the CV – what information does the eyes focus on first? The use of font and size – is the information easy to read? the use of bullets – is the information easy to extract? You have the first 5-10 seconds to make an impression, so make sure you do it right. View the cv templates from Cvmaker for the perfect resume!