Are you guilty of these Project Management CV errors?

Posted on | October 23, 2009 | Author: | lindsayascott | 2 Comments

Following on from our recent newsletter on project management interview and assessments I wanted to take a step back for a minute and answer some of the questions from candidates I’ve been receiving lately. Never mind about the interview stage, some people are not even getting past the CV submission stage!

I guess most people are fed up of hearing about the increased competition in the marketplace for jobs and that they don’t need to change their CV because it’s already worked perfectly well before when they were last job hunting.

But when you’re a couple of months down the line and still not giving even a sniff or a whiff of a job interview, are they still so sure that their CV is doing everything it can for them?

Here are my top five CV errors for today’s increased competition marketplace;

1. Does your CV actually tell the reader who you are and what you do within the first 1/2 page of the CV? Seriously, have a look, it might say your name,  address, education and some generic blurb about your personal profile, but does it actually state anywhere who you are and what you do (and importantly what you can do for the hirer)?
2. Is your CV over 3 pages? Anymore than 3 pages and people don’t read it, and that’s a fact. The hiring manager looking at 100s of applications is not going to read all your CV if it’s too long in length, so whatever you think is so important on page 6 that you had to include, won’t even get read so why do it?
   

   CV Blackhole

3. Do you actually show in your CV what you are capable of doing? Don’t waste precious space! Too many careers histories in CVs give too much detail about the organisation, the department, the project they were working on and not enough about what you actually did in the job. Remember, the CV is about selling you, not your previous employer/ organisation’s projects
4. Do you actually know who you are and is it clear to a reader who doesn’t know you? It might seem obvious but I receive applications from Project Managers all the time, when applying for project support roles! As soon as I open that CV, I close it. I’m looking for a project support officer therefore why would I look at applications from Project Managers? Often it turns out that they’re not Project Managers at all but they thought they would applied for the job with an “aspirational” CV.
5. Have you got the project management terminology and lingo right? Using project management terms throughout your CV not only gives an impression that you know what you’re talking about but also it means you’ll get pick up on the CV searches and databases. Talking the common language of project management from the outset makes the reader more likely to bring you in for an interview, it’s then up to you in interview to deliver on credibility, knowledge, experience and capability

Do you have a project management career question that needs answering or looking for advice on how to preform better in project management interviews? Contact us via email or leave a comment below. Alternatively if you’re currently struggling with unemployment please have a look at the DWP/JobCentre help available to you.

Image © bobistraveling and used with permission.

Related posts:

1. 10 ways to find a new project management job
2. Project Management Recruitment – Walking into a Beam of Light
3. How to Respond to the Changing Project Management Jobs Market?
4. DWP Executive Support – 2 months in
5. New Service Offering from Arras People – DWP Executive Support

Comments

2 Responses to “Are you guilty of these Project Management CV errors?”

1. Ajay Patwardhan
   October 26th, 2009 @ 7:09 pm

   Good points and the author is asking right questions. I would like dwell upon answers to some of the points mentioned.

   1. Every person is different and so is every job. You cannot reuse your resume created for one job to be applied to the next job. I know this is painful, but this helps you focus really on the job(s) that you care for. Sending a cookie cutter resume is a sure way to “delete”, “ignore”, or “next please!”

   2. Based on the above hypothesis, the author is correct to best utilize the CV real estate well.

   3. Basically a recruiter / resume screener / hiring manager is trying to answer a simple question, while going through the heap of resumes. “who are the top 5 candidates that I myself would talk to, in the interview round?”. Even if you any advanced mathematics or algorithms, there is no scientific way to arrive at this top 5. So the screener is basically making three lists in his mind. Must have candidates, may be candidates, and sure shot NO candidates. Its your responsibility of a resume writer to pas through these filters.

   3. As mentioned above, the screener is now taking the responsibility of selling these top 5 candidates to the interview panel. Imagine the American Idol preliminary rounds, where judges find out top 100 or 50 finalists to be sold to the American population to vote in the final rounds. That is the real crux of the shows’ popularity. Back to resume case, the person need to find out what is the screener going to use criteria to make a “NO” list and try to stay away from it.

   4. In my opinion, and back to my point #1, every resume need to be newly created for every job you apply. Here is how to do it…
   A) Carefully read the Req.
   B) Underline the key job requirements, key department within the company where the job is going to go, business unit of the large corporation where this job is required.
   C) Review your own education, experience, recommendations that are most valuable to this job. The candidate may have worked on a java development, but its useless for an HTML development job.
   D) Create a simple table, yes a table in the first page with three columns. Serial number, key job requirements, how do you map against these requirements.
   E) Basically you are helping the screener simplify his or her job. So rather than reading a three page resume to find the answer to the key question, stated in a different way, “Hope this is not a wrong candidate!”.

   5. Once you have this table in the first page of the resume, remove all the unrelated topics from the rest of the resume and keep only the relevant information.

   This has worked very well for me.

   Thanks,
   Ajay

2. lindsayascott
   October 27th, 2009 @ 1:35 pm

   Thanks Ajay, good comments that I totally agree with. I have another post coming up on Friday about cover notes, the much overlooked brother to the CV!
   Twitter: projectmgmt

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