5 WAYS TO OPTIMISE YOUR CURRICULUM VITAE

A curriculum vitae is a document that shows a hiring manager, potential employer or even a person the course of your life at a glance.

It’s funny how without words, the curriculum vitae is just a piece of paper and blank document, words create impressions and whatever words are written in your CV would determine if your CV would beat the ATS (Applicant Tracking System) a software that most companies make use of to verify if a CV is worth reading, the ATS vets CV to see certain key words and if the CV is optimised enough, it can beat the ATS.
The Curriculum vitae is your weapon in a battle for attention, everyone applying for a job role is trying to win the attention of the hiring manager, human resource manager or even a person and people go to war with updated weapons and special weapons, one of the ways to make your CV get the attention of the hiring manager is to optimise it

So how can you optimise your CV?

1. Leverage on your experiences and volunteers

Most times when I meet with youngsters who want to create their CV, they would tell me how they don’t have any experience, they would whine about how they haven’t worked with a large firm or in an office setting and because of that mindset they would say that they haven’t gotten an experience.

Please experience in a work place can come from remote roles, contract jobs, volunteering roles, fellowship trainings, Industrial trainings, Student Industrial work experience scheme which is popularly called SIWES.

I personally advise students especially undergraduates and corp members to join an organisation as a part time staff to train and learn as well as build their skills and experience even if they aren’t being paid for it.

2. Sprinkle as many skills as possible.

I always advise that before making a CV, one should have at most two specific job roles that they are targeting, don’t be a master of none and Jack of all job roles, be specific.

When you have chosen your specific job role, find out the skills needed to become a master in that sector and start learning them. Learn them thoroughly even if it means learning one skill from different academies so that you can understand the skill from different schools of thought.

Then sprinkle these relatable skills in your CV, so that the hiring manager can see how far you’ve gone to master the requirements of your potential job description and roles. Where there is no experience, skills can help to qualify you.

3. Include Achievement, milestones and results

Most people belittle their achievements because they think it’s not worth putting into their CV, some of them haven’t seen the value of their achievements like first female senior prefect of an institution, best employee of the month, best sales person of the year, you made ₦3,000,000 million for the company within 4 months, sometimes we belittle our own achievement, find that achievement of yours and put it into your CV.

Remember that “if the trumpet is yours, no one can blow it better” learn to blow your trumpet.

4. Certificates of top professional institutions even if you are yet to write their exams.

Most people are so modest about the professional bodies that they have joined and don’t remember putting it into their CV, sometimes they don’t put it because they feel that they haven’t received their certificate or written the exams, if it is in view, you can put the certificate and put in a
bracket (in process or in view)

You never can tell if that job could be yours because of that little difference between you and other applicants.

5. An Elevator pitch

This is what we call an *Elevator pitch*

Selling yourself for about 60 seconds.

Now that is how your profile should be.

Your elevator pitch should show

*Your Name*
*What you do*
*Who you do it for*
*How long you’ve done it*
*What people benefit from what you do*

Mine usually goes like this

*I’m a sales and financial Advisor, with 2 years experience in marketing, knowledgeable in copywriting, content marketing, brand storytelling and negotiation. I help individuals to get the best financial plan that suits their financial capability so that they can achieve their financial goal and companies to reach their target audience with the value that they give*

So a profile can go like this

*My name is Ejimi, graduate of business management, an Aspiring Project manager, with 2 years internship experience at Melson projects consults, skilled at database management, critical thinking, software designing, proficient with Microsoft office suite and project management softwares*

You should always be armed with one in your CV

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