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13th Oct 2009
Careers Centre > CV Writing Advice

Making Your CV Job Board Friendly

The explosion of job websites both generic and niche (such as ClearlySecretarialJobs) has been one of the hallmarks of the recruitment industry over the last decade.

This has had a huge impact on the job seeker enabling a whole world of jobs to be accessed at the touch of a button from the comfort of their own home, seemingly putting the job seeker more in control of their application process.

However, what is often missed by the job seeker is the change this has had on the recruitment process from the recruiter's point of view.

This change is important as it has significantly altered the strategy required by the job seeker to become successful in securing interviews in today's job market.

In order to create a strategy for success by submitting your CV to job boards it is important to understand how a recruiter will use the site.

When a recruiter or agency receives the job description and person specification from the hiring manager the recruiter will go through a process of finding candidates dependent on the resources available to them - from looking internally, searching their own candidate databases to utilising 3rd party channels such as job boards.

Top quality job boards will allow the recruiter not only to post their jobs to the site, but also to search the job board database based on the recruiter's specifications and rank candidates against these key criteria.

This point is key for the job seeker. No longer is producing a functional CV with career and educational history enough. Language and format are now key to getting found by a recruiter searching databases.

Due to the nature of these results the recruiter is more than likely to look at the Top 10 strongest criteria matches first, no matter when the application took place, so simply getting in first is not enough to guarantee your CV being screened by a human even if you tick all the boxes.

So what can be done to give your CV the best chance of being in the first Top 10 screening?

The compatibility of your CV to the job board database is essential. This may sound obvious but is missed by many. When uploading your CV instructions on file size and software compatibility will be shown, however as a general guide it is best as a .doc (MS Word) file less than 200kb in size.

In reality a clear, well written two page CV should be no more than 100kb so if your CV is more than this you may want to ask yourself why?

Language used on the CV is key. Much has been made around keywords and keyword searching and for job boards rightly so as this is what the recruiter will use.

The result of the keyword and criteria search gives the recruiter their ‘Top 10'.

Top quality candidates research their sector and targeted job profiles and list the keywords that recruiters use in the job adverts and weave the keywords throughout their CV. 

Simply listing a whole set of keywords at some point in the CV is not a great strategy. Whilst you may initially get listed in the computer keyword search your CV then has to pass the first human scan.

Keyword listing or ‘spamming' is immediately seen as a negative to the human eye and will most likely move you on to the reject pile.

Utilise the keywords alongside strong action words around your achievements. Matched with a clear well designed CV, this will easily ensure you stand out from the crowd when the recruiter reads the CV.

Using different terms for similar things throughout your CV is a great tactic as it covers the different terms that may be searched upon.

For example a ‘Board Level PA' could also be an ‘Executive Level Personal Assistant'. Do the keyword homework.

Creating a well targeted CV that matches against both database searches and human screening takes effort and time. This investment will hugely increase the chance of being successful and progressing to the interview stage.

Harvey Greenwood (aka The CV Guy) has over 14 years of experience in the recruitment sector having managed recruitment teams for high profile corporate organisations across various sectors and helped individuals create and develop highly effective Curriculum Vitaes and online Personal Branding portfolios.



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