#016 - How To Actually Tailor Your CV/Resume To The Role

How To Actually Tailor Your CV/Resume To The Role

How many social media ads have you scrolled through in your life?

Hundreds? Thousands? It might even be tens of thousands at this point. (We’re going to ignore how dystopian that feels for now.)

After some extensive research (one quick Google search) I found the average click-through-rate for social media ads seems to range from 0.57% to 3.86%. That means it takes between 25 to 175 ads for you to click on just one.

They’re spending their hard-earned cash on showing you what they think is a relevant ad and you don’t even click on it. How rude.

Not really. I know you’re not rude. Because it’s not rude to not click on something that’s not relevant to you. (Sorry, English teachers.)

And therein lies the problem for these marketers: they showed you something they thought was relevant to you, but it isn’t. You don’t click and they don’t sell their product.

When you’re looking for a new job, you’re the marketer and the recruiter/hiring manager is the one deciding whether to click or not.

If the ad isn’t relevant, you don’t click. If your profile isn’t relevant, they won’t interview you - especially when they might have another 50 CVs (or more) waiting.

Think of it another way: if a recruiter sent you a role that wasn’t relevant to you, would you want to talk with them? I think not. And I don’t blame you.

But.

As much as we recruiters and hiring managers talk about tailoring your CV for the role, how do you actually do it?

I’ve been guilty of giving this advice and not giving examples. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone give examples, actually, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do below. (I’ll base it loosely on my experience.)

Job description:

• Experienced with Recruitment in Marketing/Growth/Commercial (e.g., Product Marketing, Growth Director, Paid Social, CRM, Growth Marketing, Brand).

The CV:

• Hired over 100 candidates in the past 2-and-a-bit years, including those working in Product Marketing, Growth Marketing, Paid Social (and other performance-marketing roles), Brand, and more.

Job description:

• Hands-on sourcing and owning the candidate experience.

The CV:

• Sourced and hired directly for 95% of roles

• Own the candidate experience from initial outreach/application to interviews to offer to onboarding

Job description:

• Strong selling and closing skills.

The CV:

• Offer acceptance rate of over 90% while hiring for junior, mid-level, and senior roles.

Job description:

• Understands key KPIs in their remit.

The CV:

• Monthly assessments of key KPIs such as time-to-fill, hires per month, offer acceptance rate, referral percentage, DE&I hires, candidate experience data (both quantitative and qualitative), and more.

Job description:

• Confident working with Head of/VP level stakeholders and the CEO.

The CV:

• Stakeholders have included Senior VPs, VPs, Heads of, Senior Directors, and Directors. Received positive feedback (screenshots available).

As you can see, results and achievements are Monopoly.(The name of the game.) I haven’t just mentioned what kind of people I was responsible for hiring; I’ve mentioned how many of them I’ve hired in a specific time period. I haven’t just mentioned I source candidates; I’ve said what percentage of my roles I’ve sourced for directly. I haven’t just said I have strong selling and closing skills; I’ve said what percentage of my offers are accepted.

I’ve demonstrated an understanding of what the key KPIs might be rather than just saying I’m responsible for key KPIs. I’ve mentioned specific stakeholders I’ve worked with rather than just listing ‘stakeholder management’ as a skill.

If you’re struggling with turning your responsibilities into results, ask yourself the following question: “What happened as a result of me being responsible for that?”

Let’s take the ‘Strong selling and closing skills’ point. Rather than just saying something like ‘Responsible for making offers and negotiating where appropriate,’ if I ask myself the above question, I’m able to turn that responsibility into a result. Your thinking might go something like this:

“As a result of having strong selling and closing skills - and being responsible for making offers and negotiating - I have an offer acceptance rate of over 90%.”

(Side note: this is why it’s important to keep track of your results and achievements at work.)

You won’t always have a quantifiable result. That’s okay. For example, I don’t really have a result for owning the candidate experience from application to interview to offer to onboarding. I have some qualitative data (i.e. nice emails) from candidates but not really anything I can add to the CV as a ‘result.’ Still, you can put something on your CV so you’re addressing that particular bullet point on the job description, especially if it’s a ‘requirement’ or ‘non-negotiable.’

Now, does all the above take time? Energy? Yes. Of course. This is one reason why it will serve you well to apply only to roles you’re qualified to do. For example, most recruitment roles are going to be very similar. Some might have more of an emphasis on high-volume recruitment or projects or setting up processes or hiring into a particular function or for particular skillsets or sourcing or candidate experience or something else, but tailoring the CV to each of these types of roles shouldn’t take a huge amount of work. There should be little amendments here and there and that’s about it.

If there’s anything that pays off when looking for a new job, it’s showing you’re qualified to do the role. Like owning a dog, it trumps all. Even if you have a referral, even if the hiring manager’s friend recommends you, even if you write the GOAT cold outreach message to the recruiter, if you’re not qualified - if you don’t show us you’re qualified - then you probably won’t be getting an interview. And that, after all, is the only purpose of tailoring your CV to the role.

In Conclusion

Thanks for all your kind messages after I mentioned I wasn’t feeling great. I really do appreciate it.

Here’s to a great week of job-searching.

Cheers!

PS If you missed the LinkedIn ‘hacks’ newsletter, you can read it here.

PPS I’m going on the Teal podcast next week. If you have any questions you want me and their CEO to answer, reply and let me know.