One of the best ways to help ensure you get noticed by the person in charge of recruitment is to create a CV that stands out. It has been proven that recruiters spend an average of seven seconds on a CV.

Within that time frame, they decide whether a person is suited for the specific position or not.

As you might guess when searching for a new job, first impressions are everything. Here are 10 simple but highly effective tips for you to follow to make your CV stand out to the recruiters.

The hardest part of writing your CV is starting it off and figuring out what you are going to write about when it comes to your personal statement/opening paragraph.

Use this part of your CV to establish your most important and notable achievements, accomplishments, contributions, testimonials, etc. 

Remember: this is your sales pitch and like any good pitch, don’t go on for too long!

Referring to figures in your opening statement is always a good thing! For example, quoting years of experience, project budgets you’ve achieved or saving’s your actions/contributions made the customer; this would be the ideal time to focus on this within your CV.

Every CV that a recruiter/hiring manager encounters will list a handful of responsibilities that potential employees had at their previous jobs.

While highlighting responsibilities is important, it’s not going to make you stand out.

Where you want to focus is on the results you were able to achieve at your last job.

Therefore, include factual data on your CV to back up the things you have accomplished. 

When writing your CV, it is not the time to be humble.

You want to do some bragging about your achievements as well as talking about what these achievements mean to you.

You can also go over how they benefited the company.

When highlighting these results, use bullet points rather than paragraphs to help them further stand out.

By including specific power words, you help your CV stand out because you are fully emphasising all of your accomplishments.

The power words you want to include to increase your CV’s impact on hiring managers are depending on what the job description has stated or alluded to.

For example, you may see a job description similar to the one shown below

The power words that you will want to be using would focus on the soft skills and highlighted points that have been focused on by the employer.

Within the first sentence, the focus is on a candidate who has ‘good customer service skills’. 

The power words that you would take from this opening sentence would be customer service, communication, and teamwork. 

Using the keywords that the employer is using themselves will put you in a better position when trying to stand out from other candidates. 

Work these words into each of your descriptions of previous positions.

Then include a descriptive summary of the results you were able to achieve to prove you can deliver.

Some recruitment personnel will use a software program or AI to filter through CVs.

These programs will disregard any CVs they find that have not included specific keywords.

If your CV gets rejected during a keyword search, there is no chance it is making it to the recruiter. 

Within the IT industry especially, you will often be applying for roles where specific expertise is required. 

When specialised experience or certain skills are required for the role that you are applying for, it is important to demonstrate the previous experience that you have, how you can apply this to the position being advertised, and how exactly you have applied your skills to any relevant projects (bonus points for linking to said projects as well!).

If you were applying for a position as a WordPress Developer, for example, you would want to highlight any experience that you have had with programming languages such as PHP, Javascript, HTML, CSS, JQuery, etc.

This tells the recruiter that you can fulfill the requirements necessary, add value to the team and projects that you will be assigned to, and have a strong base knowledge of all the skills typically required for this position which will notify them that they won’t have to spend as much time and resources on training.

You may be asking yourself “Which skills should I focus on for the role that I am applying for?”

The easiest way to hit all of the points is to read the job description and use them as a list of questions for you to answer on your CV.

We’ll continue to use the WordPress Developer role as our example.

Based on the key attributes for this advertisement, we would ideally like to tailor the information within our CV to focus on your knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQL, and WordPress Plugins. 

If you are able to see the exact job description of the role that you are applying for, then using the key skills required for the role, bullet pointing them down, and then effectively ‘answering’ them one point at a time will really give you the edge over others applying for the same role.

If you’re just starting out in a new industry or haven’t quite developed all of the skills required for a new job opening, it is imperative that you don’t feel intimidated by what is being asked of you.

Most of the time, the key attributes/key skills section of a job description details what a perfect candidate would look like.

Usually, companies won’t have the perfect candidate applying to their opening and will instead look to take someone who has had experience and is either willing to learn or has a foundational base of skills to build from.

Yes, the CV is about obtaining a specific job position, but you also need to focus on your personal development.

This doesn’t mean talking about the yoga class you joined a couple of months back.

When mentioning any personal growth or changes, keep it job-related.

Highlight how you have grown and changed with the various roles you have fulfilled at your job.

You want to show the recruiter/hiring manager what you have learned from previous experiences and how you are willing to continue learning and growing.

One of the best places to go and get information about any personal growth and development you have achieved is previous performance reviews.

These reviews are goldmines for positive feedback on things you have accomplished.

They can also highlight some of your better skills as they apply to the position.

You want the person in charge of recruitment to clearly see that you know about the industry you want to work in.

Use language throughout the CV that demonstrates your knowledge and expertise within the industry, as this shows recruiters that you understand the sector, which makes you more attractive as a potential employee.

Keeping up to date with current industry trends and changes also helps if you reach the interview stage.

For example, if you have had experience managing projects, however big or small, you can sum up your expertise by including a brief sentence along the lines of ‘Project Manager with 5 years of experience managing a variety of large budget projects and communicating with high-level clients in various industries’.

Your CV is also the place to show how you have developed over the years, as long as it’s relevant to the job you are applying for.

Now is the time to mention any internships that have directly affected your career and minor roles that show you first starting out in your career choice.

A question that we receive a lot as a recruitment consultancy is ‘Should I include my required rate/salary expectations on my CV as a contractor’?. 

From experience of helping thousands of contractors through the CV writing and interviewing process, we have seen a lot more success from candidates who have left out their salary expectations on their CV.

Now, you may be thinking that this is quite an important piece of information to include on your CV and it may seem strange to not include this when applying for a contracting position, however, the success rate of the contractors that we have helped who have not included this information has been considerably higher than those who have.

Not having a salary expectation/rate on your CV opens the door for any potential employers to focus on the expertise and skills that you possess rather than being put off or even disregarding your entire application due to a single figure that you have put on your CV.

In the Contracting industry, the job of the Recruiter is to make sure that both the candidate applying for the role and the client who is looking for a contractor are happy.

Making sure that both parties are satisfied with the process is mainly a case of matching an interested candidate to a job role that we know they want to apply for.

At Lucid, we don’t send a CV over to a client until we know that the candidate is willing to apply for the position and is 100% having their information sent over. 

When making this judgment, we ask for a variety of details including your rate of pay, this makes the inclusion of your daily/hourly rate on your CV redundant and possibly detrimental to your chances of progressing through the application process.

One mistake that many people make is leaving their best-selling points for their cover letters. 

It may be surprising to hear, but recruiters often won’t even read your cover letter and have already made their decision on your suitability for the role based on your CV.

Oftentimes, why this happens is because the recruiter will typically see your CV before your cover letter, so you want to include any unique selling points you have on your CV, as well as in your cover letter. 

One of the best ways to do this is by answering the question of ‘why you want this particular job and what makes you qualified’.

Focus on answering both of these questions at the beginning of your CV.

When answering this question, make sure you mention any particular skills the employer listed in the advert.

Recruiters sift through numerous CVs each day.

The more they sift, the more one page starts to look like the others. How you structure your CV can make all the difference.

Your CV is like a written introduction of yourself.

The hiring manager or recruiter will often read the CV before the cover letter, so make it count.

At the top, you want to include your personal details, including contact information. 

Only include your postal address if it works in your favour. For example, if you live in the same town as the place you are applying at, the hiring manager will know you are already nearby. This sends the message you can easily travel to and from the office, making you more appealing.

When typing up your CV, you want to do so in a way that you are responding directly to the job description.

In the CV, you want to address exactly why you are the best choice for the position.

Tailor your accomplishments from previous jobs to the various parts of the position you are applying for. 

In your CV, you are showing the recruiter that you understand what job you are applying for.

You want to write the CV in a way that shows them this.

The more you can prove to them that you understand what is being asked of you, the more likely your CV is to stand out.

Customising your CV for each specific position you are applying for will take a lot of time but putting in the extra effort to customise it for the role will pay off when you land the position you are after.

While this might seem like an obvious thing to do, not everybody does it.

Proofreading your own work can be daunting, but once you send your CV to the recruiter, there is no way to get it back.

Any typos you missed are going to be glaring the recruiter right in the face. 

As soon as you finish typing up your CV, you want to run it through a spell checker program, such as Grammarly.

When using a software program, don’t just blindly make corrections.

Read the suggestion, read what you wrote and then see if it fits. After doing this, walk away for a little bit, come back, and read through it a second time.

If at all possible, have a family member, or even a friend proofread it a final time before sending it in.

Written by Lucid Support