Sinead English - CV & Interview 101: How to Apply and Interview for Jobs

CV & INTERVIEW 101

HOW TO APPLY AND INTERVIEW FOR JOBS

SINAD ENGLISH

This edition first published in 2019 by

POLARIS PUBLISHING LTD
c/o Aberdein Considine
2nd Floor, Elder House
Multrees Walk
Edinburgh, EH1 3DX

www.polarispublishing.com

Distributed by Birlinn Limited

Text copyright Sinad English, 2019

ISBN: 9780957507623
eBook ISBN:9780957507630

The right of Sinad English to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Designed and typeset by Polaris Publishing, Edinburgh

Printed in Great Britain by MBM Print SCS Limited, East Kilbride

INTRODUCTION

Writing your CV or getting ready to do an interview for a job? Chances are you have lots of questions. Should I? What if? How can I? Help! This book gives highly practical and instantly actionable advice on 101 issues, questions and scenarios most frequently encountered by people when applying and interviewing for jobs. When you dont have your own personal CV and interview coach on speed dial this book is the next best thing... and costs a lot less. Straight-talking, instructive and using templates and worksheets to help you give the employer exactly what they want to see and hear, it will make the task of securing your ideal job significantly easier and a lot less stressful.

Sinad English is a career consultant and highly engaging speaker across all aspects of managing your career. She has helped thousands of clients secure their ideal job by advising on how to write CVs that get noticed and preparing them to deliver excellent interview performances. She set up the career advisory firm Hilt in 2007. Learn more at www.wearehilt.com

For John, Emmet, Aoibhinn and Hugh

CONTENTS

YOUR CV

What is your CVs job?

Your CV has only one job to do: get you an interview or put you on a shortlist that moves you to the next stage of the selection process.

Your CV should tell the employer that you have experience and achievements that could be of benefit to them. The words you use throughout the CV should give them evidence that you can meet the requirements and challenges of the job and make a great contribution to their company.

If a real-live human being is the first to review it (increasingly unlikely) a good CV will make them sufficiently interested, curious or just downright fascinated to meet you. They will want to ask you questions about what they have read. If the CV is analysed by a robot searching for keywords (quite likely) your CV needs to give them enough fodder to tip you into the Yes list. Once your CV has done that it can relax and take a break mission accomplished. Then its over to you in the interview to bring the words on the CV to life.

CV vs LinkedIn

I dont need a CV anymore. I have a LinkedIn profile surely thatll do the trick. WRONG. Some employers advertising jobs on this social networking platform will invite you to apply using your LinkedIn profile. One click and off goes the application. What could be easier? This will work well under certain circumstances.

1. You are 100% sure that your profile is excellent.

2. You are applying for a role that closely matches your past work experience its all about the keywords and ensuring the skills you have listed on your profile match what the job advert is looking for.

Heres the problem with this one-click-and-youre-done approach: we have seen thousands of LinkedIn profiles and most of them are far from excellent. 49% of profiles on the platform are incomplete. You could be sending a half-baked profile to the employer for a job you would love to get good luck with that approach.

Even when a job advert invites you to apply using your profile, most employers will also give you the option to attach a CV. If you are to maximise your chances of getting an interview this is not an option you need to do this.

Applicant Tracking Systems ATS

So much for Human Resources. Do humans even look at CVs anymore or is it all robots?

If you click an Apply Now button to apply for a job its almost certain that your CV is going to be run through an ATS. Heres a scary statistic over 75% of CVs are rejected by the ATS without ever being seen by a human. When you receive an automated Thank you for your application but you have been unsuccessful... email you would really like to think that someone, ANYONE took the time to diligently review and consider your CV before they sent you that email. They didnt. The robot did it.

Four ways to maximise your chances of getting past the ATS

Keywords are everything. This is all the ATS has to assess when it is analysing your CV. Mirror the exact words they used in the job description. Match the language and terminology they use. Think of it as an exercise in the card matching game snap. If they want it, make it crystal clear that you have it. ATS robots cant interpret that the several accounting software packages you mentioned you worked with are in fact Sage and Quickbooks. It will think that you dont have that experience and you will probably end up in the No pile.

Avoid tables, charts, graphics and logos. You may think they look slick but the ATS will churn out a rejection as it wont be able to interpret what is in the tables or depicted on those amazing charts you spent hours perfecting. Keep it simple. Clear section headings, plain bullet points, no fancy fonts, borders or shading. Go easy on the boxes, tables and formatting. Content that is highly stylised and uses data visualisation or snazzy infographics to explain what you are offering (think pie charts indicating how much time you have spent in each job or bar charts depicting your level of proficiency in particular skills) is also a tough one for the ATS to figure out.

Keywords are good but resist the temptation to go overboard. Mentioning the same keyword two or three times throughout the CV is enough to make an impact. You are not the first person to think it is a great idea to put multiple keywords in white ink in the footer of the page. Invisible to the human eye but the ATS will pick them up. Genius! Wrong! The ATS will flag blatant keyword stuffing and your plan will backfire.

And speaking of headers and footers many of the CVs we see have the name and contact details of the candidate neatly displayed in a header or footer on the document. The problem with this is that some ATS cannot read these sections. There are enough potential reasons why you may not be contacted for an interview dont let the fact that the ATS couldnt figure out who you are or how to contact you be one of them!

OK, enough about robots...

Back to the humans. How long will they take to review my CV?

On a good day employers will take a maximum of thirty seconds to review the CV and decide if they are interested enough to read on. Some research puts this figure as low as six seconds.