Jonathan Lee’s Top Tips for Making Your CV Stand Out

A recruitment consultancy of Jonathan Lee’s size and longstanding sees thousands of CVs every month. These CV’s cover a wide variety of skill sets, experience levels and come from countries all over the world. For that reason, it’s more important than ever to make your CV stand out from the crowd, and maybe get you the interview for that dream job!

1. Keep it Short & Sweet

First of all, your CV needs to be easy to read and digest. So, stick to one or two pages and focus detail in your employment and educational background that’s directly relevant to the roles you are seeking. Focus on achievements which have more impact than endless paragraphs about your day to day responsibilities.

Make sure your experience is reflected in your LinkedIn profile as potential employers will often seek to verify information on their applications.

2. Keywords are Key

Secondly, if you’ve uploaded your CV to a jobs board so recruiters can find you, keywords are very important.  Job titles and job buzzwords will help a search engine pick out your CV from the pile.

Confused? Don’t be. A marketing candidate might mention SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), social media, direct marketing and digital campaigns among their experience and skills, for example.

However, if you’re not sure, have a search online and see what words are commonly mentioned when you input your job title.

3. Make it Personal

The statement or profile section at the beginning of the CV is your opportunity to stand out from the crowd. Furthermore, it should state what you’ve done in the past, what you want to do next, and the skills that bridge the two. It should also sum up the whole document and explain to the reader why your application is relevant to their specific requirements.

Finally, avoid making your CV look like a skills list – it needs to be the one that catches the attention of the potential employer so they keep reading to the end.  So, keep it simple.