But this is not the only thing we should take into account when constructing the perfect CV.
Experience and hard data count
It is best to start creating a CV from the “experience” section. And it is here that the greatest emphasis should be placed. This results, among others, from a survey recently conducted by Emplocity company (creator of the world’s first chatbot for recruitment). As many as 71% of recruiters admitted that they look first at the candidate’s top three responsibilities for their most recent position. Job title, like industry, is far less important (only 39% of recruiters pay attention to them). The explanation is simple – depending on the company, the same position can mean completely different responsibilities. Meanwhile, employers are generally looking for people who have dealt with similar topics and performed similar tasks to those that await future employees. Ideally, if the candidate can boast of success. And it is worth mentioning them already at the stage of the CV. It’s not about neat descriptions, but about specifics, such as a 20% increase in sales or millions of dollars in savings. In a survey conducted by headhunter Michael Page, as many as 94% of recruiters from 12 European countries agreed that the CV is much more persuasive when it contains hard data. Yet few candidates include them in their resumes.
Recruiters want specifics
More than half of the recruiters surveyed by Emplocity, especially those looking for employees in the engineering and IT industries, look for information in the resume about projects completed by the candidate. And they expect more than just their name and duration. Therefore, it is worth trying to give a short description of projects that will best suit the employer’s profile. Here, it is the specifics that count. The same applies to the skills possessed. Soft skills such as creativity or communication skills are much less important for recruiters at the stage of reviewing the CV (they can be easily verified during the interview) than technical skills, especially those specific ones, such as programming languages or operated tools and technologies. The principle of concreteness also applies to the knowledge of foreign languages. It’s worth to define your level in accordance with the CEFR classification of the Council of Europe (e.g. A2, B2, C1), even if we don’t have a certificate confirming it. As many as 7 out of 10 headhunters admitted that this is the information they look for in a CV.
Training and hobbies don’t matter
More than half of Poles do not work in their learned profession, so it’s no wonder that the level of education is more important for recruiters than its direction. Only 32% of them take into account the courses and additional training completed by the candidate. This does not mean that we do not put them in the CV – they will be an additional asset, provided that we mention them at the very end. The same applies to hobbies or social activities we are involved in. As many as 62% of job seekers admitted that they do not take this information into account at all, although it appears in almost every CV. Meanwhile, information such as financial expectations, availability, preferred form of cooperation or readiness to possibly move is often missing. And they sometimes turn out to be key in the process of selecting the ideal employee.
