Redefining Recruitment
Redefining Recruitment
You should ideally include two or three relevant hobbies. You should chose hobbies that help to demonstrate transferrable skills and competencies or involve group activity and team work. Try not to include hobbies that are too vague such as socialising, shopping or reading or any hazardous or high risk sport that could result in injury or time off work. Remember part of the hiring process is down to cultural fit, so try not to include anything that has the potential to be discriminated against.
It is definitely important to ensure you list every work based award, achievement and commendation in the relevant places of your CV. Briefly explain what the award was for and how you achieved it. Listing these will show any potential employer how you are willing to go above and beyond to succeed in your role. Where you can try and ensure these accomplishments are quantifiable by relating them to sales, profits or cost savings.
You should always include your Education, however, to what extent depends on how long ago you took the qualifications. If you have recently left school or University then it is important to list all of your recent grades and qualifications leading up to and including your Degree. However, if you have been employed for a while then Education will not necessarily be as important so it is worth condensing the information down. (For example: 11 GCSE’s grade A-C rather than listing each individual subject).
Gaps in employment can always be a bit of a taboo with potential employers, so it is always best to explain these where possible. You don’t necessarily have to go into a lot of detail to justify the gap, keep your explanation brief (i.e. Maternity leave or Caring for family member).
Short bouts of employment can be alarming to some potential employers and give the perception that you cannot secure a longer term position for whatever reason. However, this can simply be down to how you list these on your CV. For example, if you have been an employee of the same Recruitment Agency for the last 18 months but have completed various assignments during this time we would advise to list them as such and include brief details on the type of role and companies where you worked. For example:
Allstaff Recruitment Oct 2019 – Present
Various Temporary assignments
It is always important to include a cover letter with your application even if it is to a Recruitment Agency. A cover letter gives you the opportunity to include important skills linked to the Job description that your CV does not necessarily detail. It allows you the opportunity to highlight important skills and how you match the job description. In addition, it shows you have taken the time to read through the job description and highlighted how you match the required skills, this will most certainly make you more favourable than another applicant that has only submitted a generic CV.
Your Profile should be a clear concise Bio about your relevant professional experience, your personal characteristics and your skills, qualities and strengths. It needs to be bold and confident and positively identify you. This will help tell the prospective employer what kind of person you are and the qualities and work experience you possess.
If there is one piece of advice that we always give it is spell check, spell check, and spell check again! There is nothing worse than a potential employer stumbling onto a spelling mistake or an Americanisation. This can immediately raise into question your attention to detail skills and can massively impact your chances of securing an interview.
And finally, it is always good practice to make sure your CV is tweaked to be specific to the role that you are applying for.
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