Stuart Blake, an experienced career coach in the West Midlands believes many job seekers are not receiving good quality advice. This is especially true when it comes to preparing their CV’s. In the current UK economic climate, there are hundreds of people chasing each advertised role. The key difference between a successful job search and failure lies in helping people to really stand out in this crowded market. Because so many people are job searching right now, we would like to share his advice about CV preparation as our guest blogger.
Stuart Blake at Coach 1st has had years of experience working in recruitment and is now a qualified and trained career, executive and transformation coach. “The stark reality is that 95% of CV’s are binned in under 5 seconds, without being read to the end. It’s sad for those individuals but any CV that has errors, inaccuracies or does not flag to a potential employer the value they can bring to that organisation, is simply a waste of time and effort”.
Thousands of graduates or school leavers looking for their first, critical post on the career ladder are being simply being advised by careers departments up and down the country to ‘Google a CV template’ and fill it in. These students are being failed by the education system because these templates produce poor quality CV’s that do not sufficiently differentiate job seekers as individuals. Employers see hundreds of these ‘standard’ CV’s that tell them very little about each candidate. These are the CV’s that are destined to be filed in some CRM system rather than being read with interest by a recruiter or potential employer. To get an individual placed on the shortlist for interview the CV has to be in the top 5%. For the individual student concerned this is especially demotivating as application after application gets rejected, often without them understanding why that is happening.
Even people with many years of work experience have the same problem, especially when they decide to have a career change. These mature job seekers need to focus more on the transferable skills learned in one environment that will be valuable to an employer in a different sector. A CV with lengthy personal profiles and very little detail that will grab the attention of a future employer will also fail the 5 second attention span test.
So, how do you get your CV into the top 5% that are actually read from start to finish? Stuart advises “try to put yourself in an employers’ shoes. What can you say about your successes and achievements in your life or work experience to date? Ask yourself, are these achievements verifiable and would they be really useful to a future employer? Above all, to be successful you must describe what makes you different from the hundreds of others who attended the same or similar school or university”.
If you need help in your job search and would welcome some professional advice call Coach1st on 03301 333 910 or email stuartb@coach1st.co.uk.
More about our guest blogger, Stuart Blake
Stuart is a member of the ICF and EMCC and has certificates in Career Coaching, Life Coaching and Executive Coaching.
He is an empathetic, motivational individual who supports businesses and individuals to be the best they can be in every way. In over 30 years in the business, Stuart has advised over 52,000 job seekers and written over 17,000 CV’s.
Since 1986, Stuart has spent his career in the recruitment/employment sector, working both in the UK and Europe for some of leading staffing companies. As a Managing Director/ Chief Executive Officer he has led businesses successfully in the Private and Public sectors having created significant ROI along the way.
As well as coaching individuals, Stuart runs webinars that help people improve their job search results and land their ideal job. To find out more visit coach1st.co.uk or book his next Take Control of your Job Search webinars here.