5 key tips to make your CV instantly better

How do you make your CV great, regardless of your current experience?

How do you stand out amongst the sea of CVs a hiring manager receives?

How can you present your best self in just one or two pages?

All these are very valid questions.

The modern job market, with automated systems for reading & screening CVs has made it even more crucial to ensure your CV is as good as it possibly can be, especially if you are wanting a job at a big or popular corporation (think a big bank, consultancy or tech company).

For example, to show how ruthless the initial application screening process can be, JPMorgan receives over 490,000 applications for its 4,000 internship positions each year.

Put yourself in the shoes of a hiring manager tasked with selecting prospective interns for second...

Let’s say you can only interview 10,000 of those applicants...

How the hell do you select only 10,000 CVs from 490,000 applications?!

The brutal reality is that if you are applying for a job with more than a 20:1 applicant-to-interview ratio, your CV may only be looked at for a split second by a computer (if at all by a human recruiter) to determine your eligibility.

Getting past this initial selection filter requires one key thing:

Relevant keywords.

This can be anything from your education (e.g. degree, GPA) to experience (past roles or companies) to skills or buzzwords you list in your CV.

So, to save yourself time & disappointment in your next application process, we recommend you tailor your CV to each role you are applying for.

This is so key that we’ll repeat it:

You should tailor your CV to the role you are applying for.

I know, this seems counter-productive; you are wanting to save time and effort, so why do I need to add more work to the task of applying by tailoring my CV?

Well, the truth is that in order to get past the first screening filters, you need to ensure your CV contains all of the relevant keywords necessary for the specific role you are applying for.

Take the time to look at the job description of the role you’re interested in. What skills do they list? What experience do they require? What background do they prefer? Then review your CV - if you were judging your CV based on these requirements, would you give your CV a good score? If not, you need to ‘adapt’ your CV.

It can always feel like a ‘numbers game’ when applying for jobs, especially in the early stages of your career.

But, if you are clear with what you want, selective with the roles you apply for and make sure your CV is as relevant as possible, it can make the application process much more pleasant.

Now for some other hard truths.

It can definitely serve you to be ‘realistic’ in your job hunt. It really helps if you can roughly know how to weigh the probability of landing an interview for each role you’re applying for. Just try to ask yourself honestly if you have a chance of getting interviewed - would your CV catch your eye if you were in the shoes of the recruiter?

Very popular roles (greater than a 20:1 applicant-to-interview ratio) can afford to be picky - they will filter on things such as degree & university. It is the harsh truth

It is true that there are unfair & questionable filtering techniques.

We’ve all heard the horror stories of recruiters splitting a stack of CVs in half and throwing one half in the bin.

Now, I don’t think this is common, if at all nowadays - especially with the modern power of AI. I believe popular & competitive job openings can afford to select based on very specific criteria, and so it is key to ensure you are aware of the odds, and put your best foot forward, when applying for any highly competitive role.

I know this section was titled ‘how to make your CV great, regardless of experience’, and so far I’ve talked about setting expectations and how experience can be a key filtering criteria - I’m sorry, it is just the nature of the highly-competitive job markets!

However, we still believe anyone can make significant improvements to their current CV by following five actionable steps:

1. Keep it short & sweet

2. Don’t just say what you did; say how you helped

3. Always add numbers to showcase your success

4. Ensure you showcase all the desired ‘hard skills’

5. Show initiative, passion & dedication
   
   

Keep it short & sweet

There are a few small exceptions depending on the role you’re applying for, but a good rule to follow is to keep your CV to one page.

If you haven’t already got your CV onto one page, I know it can feel like an impossible task!

However, with the right combination of shortening the content & refining the formatting, you can fit any CV into one page.

In fact, I now believe the shorter & more succinct the CV, the better.

It shows focus, shows clarity - and if everything on the page is directly relevant or interesting for the role you’re applying for, then it makes your CV very attractive.

For example, here’s one successful candidate:

“when I was first applying to roles and heard about the ‘one page’ rule, I made sure to try and cram as much information into every square cm of the page!

However since growing in my career, changing roles three times and even recruiting candidates myself, I’ve come to refine my CV to something which is much more easy to digest.”

With the above CV example, even the old CV did an OK job trying to use bullet points and summarise things in a succinct way. I actually don’t think the old one here is necessarily ‘bad’. But it does certainly make digesting or scanning for key info a lot harder (obviously only for a human, as a machine could scan either practically instantly!).

So it does seem that there is a trade-off here - pack as much information as possible, or make your CV ‘easy-to-glance’ as possible.

However, I don’t believe this really is a trade-off! If you look at the ‘new’ CV in the above example. It actually did contain everything that was needed from a keyword perspective, so it satisfied the automatic filtering system, and made it much more friendly for a human recruiter to look at and parse the key information they were looking for.

💡 Top tip: this applicant included a ‘Skills’ section which actually helped them pack even more relevant keywords & terms into their CV, without the need for bloated paragraphs to fit them in.

📝 Key resource: we strongly recommend using a tool such as resume.io for the formatting & templating of your CV. It makes the whole thing easier. Our trick: create your CV, pay for the cheapest subscription option, download your CV, immediately turn off the auto-renewal of the subscription, then make as many amends as possible & download all as PDFs too!

Don't just say what you did; say how you helped

This is great advice, not just for your CV.

For the purposes of your CV, it is crucial. It is the difference between having an ‘ok’ CV that seems to tick the box, and a CV that blows the person reading it away.

Outcomes are better than actions.

Outcomes are evidence of action.

Don’t just say:

“I was part of the sales team calling cold leads”

“I was a member of the accounting team, tracking inventory & sales”

Say something like:

“Conducted outbound sales, calling X leads per day, converting X sales and £X net revenue for the business”

“Conducted inventory management, tracking X SKUs to help identify efficiencies that increased stock turnover by X%”

Every bullet point should outline your impact, not just your input.

Always add numbers to showcase your success

To back up your claims on what impact you’ve had, you need to add metrics.

You can’t just say “I helped increase sales at the company” or “I gave great service to all of my customers”. You need to quantify your impact.

At first this can feel quite alien or awkward.

How can I put a number of all of these things?

Well, this should be your sign to always be looking for the tangible quantifiable impact you can have - it will serve you well throughout your career.

For the purposes of your CV, it’s ok to feel like you’re bragging. Now isn’t the time to be humble!

Clear and concise descriptions of your output, along with supporting numbers will really help your CV shine ✨

💡 Top tip: make sure every metric or outcome you list you can back up and discuss in an interview. Don’t lie about the numbers - it will only come back to bit you!

Ensure you showcase all the desired 'hard skills'

Arguably the easiest criteria to filter a CV on is whether the candidate has the appropriate technical skills.

Of course, there should be room for growth & potential, but demonstrating that you have already learnt some relevant skills (regardless of how you learnt them) is a fantastic way to prove you are a good fit for the role.

E.g. if you are looking for a role that requires a lot of Excel, there really isn’t an excuse for using a bunch of free resources out there to improve your Excel skills, and listing those skills (e.g. Data Visualisations, Simulations) in your CV.

💡 Top tip: include a ‘Skills’ section that documents all of your hard skills (adding some soft skills to this list is ok, but try to stick to hard technical skills).

Show initiative, passion & dedication

Even though a CV is a single piece of paper which is all about your bragging and showing off, you still want to come across as an interesting and nice person!

Showcasing your hobbies & passions has two benefits:

a. It makes you seem more human, and if the hobbies are unique enough, it can help you stand out (plus it is common for them to become talking points in interviews!)

b. If you can relate your hobbies and interests to the role - showing that you really are passionate about ‘X’ topic because you spend your spare time doing ‘Y’ - then it can really put you ahead and show that you are serious about the role.

💡 Top tip: the perfect way to showcase passion is to complete ‘side projects’ related to the role you’re interested in - this can be anything from volunteering, to having a hobby business, to contributing to open source software!