cvservices.net : a better career : information architecture issues

The most important thing to realise about writing a job application is that you will look stupid if you appear to give priority to the wrong information. The words Curriculum Vitae, for example, are self evident and do not need even to be included unless you are a lawyer applying for a job with a stuffy firm in Edinburgh. Most CV’s that people send to me for appraisal draw attention to irrelevant, contingent and even damaging information and they often compound the agony by having excruciating stock headings such as CAREER OBJECTIVES, PROFILE, ACHIEVEMENTS and SKILLS.

You will be writing about these things and others but they should be more implicit, more integrated with the narrative, given clear priority and related to your goals and your professional level, not scattered freely all over the place to show how wonderful you were even as a teenager. UNSUBSTANTIATED SUPERLATIVES are the death of sophistication and will mark you down as a person who lacks the intellect, maturity and imagination to tell other people WHAT THEY WANT TO KNOW.

Avoid templates in books, computer programs and web site CV builders; the results will be rubbish compared with what can be achieved. Every career is so different that there simply are no rules about what you should include and how you should set your CV out. There are suggestions, freely available, but I would ignore them and use your mind to create something that actually works.

Internationally there are supposed to be rules but all that has also changed since the books were written. I have created CV’s for virtually every location on earth including Fiji and Iceland and the only guideline I follow is to make the text as universally comprehensible as possible, bearing in mind that some nationalities and professions favour academic background, others lean to results or experience and in some circumstances it will be concepts, methods and insight that makes your case.

Versions

Elsewhere on this web site I discuss the issue of versions and how it causes such a lot of needless anxiety to job applicants. I have been writing applications for people for 10 years and this is my opinion...

It is in almost every case possible to produce one generic and perfect CV that covers everything, for that job and any other, both chronological and functional. You just need to be a good writer who knows how to achieve this complex goal - of a neat, brief, alive, informative and effective CV that hits the target and generates interest.

If you feel you must approach a particular opportunity by relating your application to the job definition or recruitment agency’s creative writing, then you have a letter to write - as the rational place to chop and change strategies. In practice, having created more than 3000 CV’s in 10 years, I rarely alter the letter very much either because it ruins the rhythm and the subtle messaging that is just as important as what you actually say.

Only for very hide bound and jargonised areas of employment such as health and social services and teaching with reactionary left wing authorities would I recommend a letter that slavishly follows the job definition. Some NGO’s are also fairly conventional, but in all other cases I would recommend getting one version that you are happy with and leaving within it the space for at most two paragraphs of new text that relates to the particular job - if it is needed and you can still keep the entire letter on one page (and the entire CV on two).

Messaging and the subtext

Writing at the level I am about to describe is hard to achieve. This takes us beyond what the recruitment agency ever dreamed of. This is not about the nuts and bolts of putting text on a page. It is four examples of what can be achieved with really creative writing. In order to carry this off you will need to know enough about your own writing style to put it aside and take the handcuffs off. To achieve the results I am about to describe you might have to write ten, twenty, even thirty different versions of your CV until the perfect version starts to shine through.

This kind of writing is intensive; it asks you to converge information and diverge it at the same time; it only works if you keep your heart on secondary issues such as rhythm, the sound in the reader’s mind, the poetics and emotions associated with words and phrases..

Even if you were an expert who did this for a living it would take you more than a day of extremely exacting concentration, possibly two days for a complex career... which is why getting a good CV and a gifted letter of application does not come cheap.

Subtext is the critical issue and these four examples will illustrate it:

PROBLEM 1

Aged 45; facing redundancy; median qualifications; with the same company for 18 years in a variety of roles including production management, process engineering, logistics, some input to computer systems, lots of general/man management. All the jobs he looks at are demanding commercial experience related to business development and sales strategy but his CV looks nothing like that...

SOLUTION 1

Stand back from the specific jobs titles and use typesetting style that minimises their impact and brings attention to professional roles and the DEVELOPMENT of his career. Make sure that every section of narrative links in to more than just his department. Illustrate the connections, synergies, relationships with commercial partners, impact of his work on product development and quality, measures taken to achieve cost reductions and efficiency improvements, how his style of management has help reduce staff defections and improve productivity and initiative.

In other words, make the subtext of the entire CV a subtle piece of messaging that implies, suggests, validates and proves that his contribution to the commercial success of the business has been tremendous. Show that he understands that job roles are merging and the team is the future but never use crude and obvious phrases to do so. Leave in the mind of the person who reads the CV an impression of a very switched on guy who virtually invented end-to-end business process re-engineering! Use the letter to punch this message home in a lively way that does not repeat any information but achieves a very high level summary of its implications in terms of his likely future achievements.

It can be done; this is what I do for a living. I NEVER use words like RESPONSIBLE FOR, GOOD COMMUNICATION SKILLS and all the other half-baked shorthands that recruiters are tired of reading, yet these ideas are always present in the subtext.

PROBLEM 2

Human resources professional, living in a jargon rich environment and worried about not having enough experience in depth to apply for HR Manager job; caught in the jargon between generalist, administration, training, development, assessment centres and recruitment; cannot any longer see the context she has worked in and how her involvement has helped shape an organisation.

SOLUTION 2

For each job go back to the basics and ask the questions: 1) how was the organisation when I joined and what were its systems and structures; 2) what process of change came about and what aspects of that did I create, plan, orchestrate and integrate; 3) what were the results and how was that organisation when I left?

Using this methodology as your subtext you end up suggesting without having to say it that you were an apostle for organisational change who was able to impact the entire culture and performance of the company you worked for. Not only did you achieve this once, but you did it in several different scenarios and could do it again in another. When you get to the interview the agenda is about what needs doing and how it might be done, NOT whether you are fit to do it...

PROBLEM 3

Person working in not-for-profit sector finding a much changed world and people asking for all kinds of things she can’t quite understand the implications of. She knows what she is good at and before taking a career break she had a responsible and satisfying job at the communication and information end of a national organisation. Things are swimming in front of her eyes as she tries to make her applications with a hopelessly stilted CV and a desperately formal letter.

SOLUTION 3

Take a dip in the information age where internal and external PR and the effective and democratic handling of complex issues is the difference between a thriving organisation and one that is fading away. Make a list of everything she ever did with her biggest employer and ask endless questions about the necessities, issues, problems, implications, methodologies, streams of progress, consultation and information processes - and the results. Re-structure the entire story so that this person now illustrates herself as a champion for the kind of progressive ideas that all the corporates are now adopting as they move away from adversarial capitalism. Think about (and mention in CV) minor shift in re-education that will empower change of business sector if required.

PROBLEM 4

I.T. professional working in ERP development and has walked out of his job because of a broken promise; he has created a traditional teckie CV that is full of repetitions about operating systems, query languages and even programming in C++ and the agencies offer him rubbish jobs; he is aware that the demand for this kind of person is shrinking and that he needs to leverage something with more content but he does not know how to do it.

SOLUTION 4

Shred his existing CV and find out what he has to offer in terms of ideas, visions, connectivities and imaginative applications of technology to the future as it is lining up in commercial terms, as ERP gives way to Internet as the main obsession.

Write a totally original CV that tells the story of an information architect and visionary capable of understanding the business case and proposing development work that could lead to innovative next generation products; hint at the value of his knowledge to industry competitors carefully and without being obvious. Send him back to the same agencies with a new identity that makes them take notice because they now actually understand what he is saying. RESULT: 6 interviews and 6 job offers within a week; better salary.

These topics are covered in greater depth in CV Sage with examples and exercises.
Take a look!