Your CV (aka resume) is ready and you’re about to send it out to recruitment agencies and potential employers.
Whether it’s your first job or a strategic career move, there are some things you need to do before you send off that CV.
1) Is Your Email Address Helping or Hindering?
First impressions count. So make sure your email address does not present a distorted image of you.
- Your fun email address such as “hotlover4u@…” may not strike an interviewers funny bone.
- Shared email addresses such as “tomandlinda@…” create uncertainty as to who will be reading or replying to an email. If you share your email address with your family or partner, consider setting up your own address to avoid accidental deletion of an interview confirmation and to give yourself some privacy.
- Take care over hyphens in your email. It is easy for someone in a rush to confuse a hyphen with an underscore.
- Although it’s not your fault, people can also read .com instead of .co.uk. Grab both versions of an email address if you can or choose the more easily remembered .com even that means registering your own domain.
It is worth the time to take the time to set up an email address that you can use for job applications and other activities where you want to present a good image. Choose an email address that contains your name or an abbreviation of your name. Set your email up so that your full name appears in the “From” field.
2) Future-Proof your Contact Details
Once your CV is out there, it can remain accessible to others for quite a while. An agency may want to head-hunt you in a year or so. Or an interviewer who rejected you may remember you as the perfect candidate for a position that suddenly opens up.
Therefore, your CV should list your personal email address and a personal mobile number as the primary ways to contact you. If you need to apply with your current work email address or work telephone, list these separately.
3) Check Your Online Footprint
In the current wave of social networking, it’s quite possible that there may be things about you online that you would rather prospective employers did not see. Search for your name online and see what can be found about you. The internet gives everybody the opportunity to play papparazzi so be inventive, become your own stalker and search for your email address and anything else that an agency or potential employer might try.
If you find something that needs changing, then change it. Remember that search engines can take around a month to reflect changes so do this in good time. If you do not have the rights to change it (a comment on a blog or a news article perhaps), then plan how you will respond if the subject is mentioned.
Check your profile on facebook, MySpace and any other social networking site you visit. Even if you have nothing to hide, set secure privacy options. At this early stage of your job search, you want to minimise the risk that a prospective employer may take offence at something trivial on your personal profile. Hide your friends list from casual observers and remove your tags from photos that your friends may have posted. You can always set them up again once you have secured your job.
If you have a profile on LinkedIn, ask current colleagues to write recommendations. Give people something positive to find.
4) Set a Correct Target
Your CV should be tailored to the position you are applying for. It is common and quite normal to have several versions of a CV that place emphasis on different areas. A good recruitment agent will work with you to suggest ways to customise your CV for a specific role. You will have to do the work yourself, but do ask them for help and suggestions.
Some of the less ethical recruitment agencies will not be as helpful, especially if you are applying for your first job or for a role that pays them low commission. Don’t let this put you off and don’t become agitated or rude. You need them to put your CV forward so present the best side of yourself in all your communications with them.
Recent surveys suggest that up to 73% of employers reject CV’s that do not list work related achievements. Maximise your application by making sure that your achievements are relevant to the position you are applying for.
5) Check Your Holidays!
Some people apply for jobs or submit their CV’s to online job-boards just before they leave to go on holiday. Sometimes it’s a calculated risk where the assumption is that you will be back before anybody responds to your application. However, the other side is that you are not contactable and if anyone does try to contact you, they will doubt that you are serious about your job search and they may not try to get in touch again.
If you do need to submit an application just before a holiday, then mention this in your cover letter as a courtesy – but remember that they are a stranger so do not suggest that the house will be empty for two weeks.
