Lily Shippen Recruitment Agency | Making your CV for PA stand out

Internal recruitment teams for companies and secretarial recruitment agencies in both London and Manchester receive hundreds of CV’s on a daily basis. This means that if you are a Receptionist, Team Assistant, Personal Assistant or Office Manager looking for a new job in 2017, you have just a few minutes to impress them.

In fact, according to a study by TheLadders, an online job-matching service, recruiters spend an average of six seconds reviewing an individual CV. Not only that but in light of the economic climate, many companies are also using alternative ways to recruit staff in order to cut costs. This may include candidate referral schemes and roles being advertised internally before going out to market. Therefore, if you are looking for a new secretarial job, you really must spend time on making sure that your CV stands out from the crowd.

Here are our 6 steps to making your CV stand out;

1. Make your CV personal to you. 

We come across many CV’s that simply list roles and duties. That’s great, but it tells us nothing about your personality. Secretarial recruitment is not just about experience and length of service, it is heavily personality based too. A recruiter or company need to have an idea of the person that you are in order to quickly visualise whether you could be a good fit for the firm. A good way to start is to write a brief summary of your qualifications / experience.

For example;  Over 5 years’ experience in a Team Assistant and Personal Assistant role combined with proven success in outside and inside field sales roles. Excellent demonstrated administrative capabilities in diary management and travel coordination as part of a dynamic and diverse sales team. Formally trained to engage with and problem solve for customers while performing customer facing activities. Highly proficient with Mac and Windows, Salesforce, Concur, Microsoft Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, and Word. Strong practical knowledge with social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. Excellent organizational and time management skills on a professional and personal level.

2. List education and courses at the top of your CV.

Clearly list your education with most recent studies at the top of your CV and grades achieved. You can also add any courses that you may of taken here too. If you are applying for a role in financial services for example, it could be a good idea to look at courses that give an introduction into Investment Management / Investment Banking. Secretarial courses are also available online too.

3. Keep it concise.

I would advise going into detail for your last 3 positions (depending on length of service in these roles). Clearly bullet point the responsibilities that you held and make sure that the grammar is consistent. If you are talking in the past tense, don’t suddenly change to the present. Additionally, make sure that you list any projects that you have worked on. If you are applying for a role that is varied, you will want to include the external event that you organised and the budget that you managed. If your previous boss travelled to multiple locations and required you to be on call 24/7, add this too. Once you have gone into detail for the last three or four roles, you should also clearly list the other positions that you have held, just make these more concise so that your CV doesn’t go on forever…!

4. Make it visually appealing.

Tailor your CV to the company; if you are applying to a Private Equity firm, keep it corporate and simple. Using a nice font like Garamond or Calibri Light can look good. If you are applying to a more creative firm, you may want to make it more quirky, but I wouldn’t go over the top with this. If there is too much going on with the page, they will just move on to the next CV. Don’t over complicate things.

5. Grammar.

This is probably the most important. As a Personal Assistant, Team Assistant or Receptionist, you will need to be trusted to send out emails to clients or colleagues in a professional way. If you have sloppy grammar on your CV, a client will assume that this will be the same case in your day to day work. Spend the time going through your CV to make sure that it reads well, ask a couple of friends or family to look over it for you.

6. Make sure your LinkedIn profile matches your CV.

Social media is a great way for potential employers to weigh up candidates. Make sure your LinkedIn profile reflects the experience that you have listed on your CV. Adding a photo to your profile makes it more visual. Just maybe don’t put one with you holding a wine glass !!! Equally, check your Facebook profile, you may want to lock down your privacy settings if you are a bit of a party animal !!!