Lily Shippen Recruitment Agency | Making a CV stand out

According to theundercoverrecruiter.com, a recruiter will receive a minimum of 54 CV’s for a UK vacancy and will spend an average time of 10 seconds deciding whether or not to shortlist your CV. I can definitely vouch for these statistics and after analysing our recent job report this morning, I discovered that our average is 171 CV’s per job (and that’s on just one of our job boards!). This doesn’t apply to just recruitment agencies as companies who have careers pages or advertise their jobs via job boards and LinkedIn are also likely to receive a high volume of CV’s, depending on the brand and role advertised.

Here are some tips to make your CV stand out;

• Avoid using generic job board formats for your CV – they can make your CV look very impersonal and this is your opportunity to get across your personality so use your own format. I think that this is even more crucial for secretarial & support candidates as formatting documents will most likely be a part of your role at some point in your career.
• Hobbies and interests. Again, for secretarial & support candidates I think that this is important as personality is everything. Whether you are in to running, baking, knitting or socialising with friends, it helps an employer or recruiter understand you that little bit more!
• Achievements. When interviewing for my first job in London, I forgot that I had added as one of my achievements ‘organised a group holiday for 80 people to Zante’ onto my CV. I’m not saying that this was the most professional achievement but it was definitely a conversation starter in the interview and I don’t think that there is any harm in that.
• Languages. If you are applying for a role that may involve languages, make sure that if you speak them they are at the top of your CV so that it stands out to the employer or recruiter.
• Education. I would always recommend putting your education at the top of your CV underneath your name.