Your Cv is your sales brochure
The only criteria of success that you should use for your CV is ‘does it get me the interview?’ To get an interview your CV must demonstrate a match between the job requirements and what you have to offer. It is your personal sales brochure tailored to the needs of your future boss.
Consider how you target new prospects. You would not get much business if you quoted for every job using the same specification, design, materials and measurements. Just like when you are pitching for new business, you need to customise your offering to suit the situation.
Selling Yourself
To make it easier for your future boss to identify your relevant successes you should use bullet points to explain your job responsibilities. A useful way of approaching this is to describe the fundamental of your job in the first bullet and substantiate this in subsequent bullet points by quantifying your accomplishments. Each bullet point should commence with an action word, written in the past tense, to prove that you actually achieved what you set out to accomplish. For example, developed, maintained, reduced, etc. The key to demonstrating that your skills match the requirements of the job is to combine your responsibilities with how successful you were. In other words quantify each bullet point. Examine each achievement and ask yourself ‘so what?’ (the ‘so what’ test). Is it clear the benefit that you brought to your company? Can you validate the claim? Is the statement worth making? Each bullet point should: State what you did. Outline the purpose of what you did - the who, what, when, where, why and how. Establish whether you achieved this purpose - were you successful? Quantify the outcome - this could be in terms of market size, market penetration, savings, budget, sales, customer satisfaction, latest technology, etc. Incorporate an action word (verb), object (noun) and an outcome (adverb). Here are some examples of how sales people can use this technique to sell their successes: · Managed the Acme portfolio (five brands) worth €10 million sales per annum. · Led a successful new product launch across Europe for the Road Runner product resulting in sales of €0.5 million in year one and double-digit growth for the subsequent three years. · Worked with an external consultancy to build the brand architecture for the company and position the ‘Acme’ brand nationally to create 75% awareness levels with existing and new markets over an 18-month period. The Last Word Your CV is a self-portrait of who you are, so autograph your work with excellence and write a winning CV. Sue Mulhall is the founder and Director of People Matters. People Matters is a soft skills training, consulting and career coaching company. For further information please contact: Sue Mulhall People Matters 30 Delbrook Park Dundrum Dublin 16
