Stand Out: 3 Quick CV Fixes

Morning All,

Me and Lucy have just been working on improving her CV.

Here’s some mistakes we made, and how she fixed them.

1. No Numerical Credibility

Who do you believe more:

A) Someone who tells you’ve they built Machine Learning Models

B) Someone who shows the business value (money or time) their model produced?

Whilst you’ll likely believe person A.

Person B’s example is much more real.

It’s hard to lie when you start providing specific figures.

Whilst the below example s aren’t about ML models, you can see how her business success is more impressive in the second picture.

2. Chronological Order Syndrome

Recruiters don’t care WHEN you did something.

They care WHAT you did.

From your point-of-view, it’s easy to talk about the things you did first (first).

Even if that’s not as relevant as other things you may have done.

From the first draft of the personal statement, you can see how the instant mention of being a lawyer puts doubt into the recruiter’s mind about her ability to do a data analyst job.

Now?

Even though her data analysis work came after her legal training, it’s the first thing she mentions (since it’s more relevant).

Much better.

3. Dual-Column System

When you have two columns it’s hard for the recruiter to decide what to read first.

They don’t know which bits are most important.

For example, should they read the ‘about me’ section or 'the experience bit first?

Even though it’s not ‘hard’ to decide, its still a decision they have to make.

And when they’re reading 100s of CVs.

You want to make their job as easy as possible.

The single-column view is still ATS friendly.

And it’s clear what the recruiter should read first.

(Unless they have a weird habit of reading from the bottom lol).

So to summarise:

• Include numerical credibility

• Talk about what’s most important, not what you did first

• Use a single-column format

Until next time,

Albert