Relaunch Your Career

I’m getting a lot of interest for my CV, which is posted on a number of job hunting web sites. However, the jobs I’m being contacted about are not the kind of job I want! Why is this happening and how can I attract the kind of work I want to do?

Recruiters find CVs on online sites using key-word or key-phrase search rather than by trawling whole CVs. This is why you may be asked to cut and paste the content of your CV into a window when you register on job search sites, and also upload the complete CV as a file.

Take a highlighter pen to your CV and highlight all the job title and task-descriptive words in it that you might expect to see in a job advert. Now stand back and look at all the highlighted words. What kind of job have you described? We’d be willing to bet that either it’s the kind of job you’ve been contacted about, or no clear job description is coming through.

To combat this, you need to do two things. One is to be very clear about the job you want. Have a really good think about what you want your personal ‘vacancy sign’ to say. Use key words and phrases that sum up your ideal job. Take inspiration from looking at job adverts or job descriptions.

Next, you need to include more of these terms on your CV. This is why it’s good to have a career goal rather than a career summary – it gives you the chance to say what kind of work you really enjoy, and what kind of job role you’re looking for. Also review the descriptive words you’ve used on the rest of your profile, and adjust them to highlight the skills and experience you have that would make you a strong candidate for your ideal job.

Now, when recruiters contact you, it should be about more appropriate roles. You will also get a boost in enquiries as posting a revamped profile and CV will make you show up as ‘newly-posted’ on the job search sites.