Does Your CV Need a New Year Health Check?

The festive season is coming to an end and the Dubai job seeking community will be turning their attentions to the new year and what it has to offer. Many of you will be setting new career goals, and for many of you, your 2013 career push will start in January as you seek to take advantage of the New Year Jobs rush and land yourself your dream job.

However, if you really want to make sure that you get first mover advantage in 2013 you’ll need to make sure that you update end enhance your CV to ensure it is fully optimized and ahead of the competition in terms of its ability to land you an interview. If you don’t update and enhance your CV, you will fall behind the competition as you can guarantee that the most determined job-seeker will be enhancing their CVs for 2013.

So, to ensure you are ahead of the game I recommend that you give your CV a new year health check and below I have set out several steps on how to do this.

6 Step Resume Health Check

1. Do you tailor your CV to every role? Employers want to see that you are a good fit to the company culture and of course that you are a good fit to the role. To do this, you should tailor your CV to suit every application to ensure that you emphasize the most job and company relevant skills and qualities in your CV.
2. Is your CV more than two pages long? Recent research from CareerBuilder reveals that one of the main reasons that employers dismiss candidate’s CVs from consideration is because the CV is over two pages long. If your CV is over two pages it is most likely harming your chances of getting an interview invite. So, it is vital that you review and condense your CV in order to get it down to the optimal two pages to maximize your chances of being invited to interview.
3. Have you included at least three referees? Research tells us that the average candidate now supplies three employment referees on their CV – and if you want to keep up with or get ahead of the competition you need to supply at least three referees on your CV.
4. Do you have a professional e-mail address? Many candidates have unprofessional e-mail addresses like crazyjim@email.com. Research from Career-Builder shows that 35% of employers would dismiss a CV which included an unprofessional email address from consideration. So, to maximize your chance of being selected for interview, use a professional email address like james.taylor@xxx.com
5. Does your CV include a list of achievements for each role? Employers want to know not just that you did the job, but how well you did the job, and the best way to do this is it list your achievements in each role as bullet points. A CV which contains achievements will be much more attractive than one which does not.
6. Does your CV contain typos? The Career-Builder study found that the top reason for dismissing candidates from consideration was that the CV contained typos. So, make sure to proof-read, spell-check and grammar check your CV. As a further check we recommend that you read your CV out loud as this will help to identify further errors.

About the author

Kazim Ladimeji is the Director of thecareercafe.co.uk—a resource for start-ups, small business and job seekers. It includes a blog with career and small business advice articles. Kazim is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, and has been a practising HR professional for 14 years.

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