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Ok, so you know there’s a correct way to format your CV but aren’t sure which format to follow in 2021? Then this post is for you. Here are the most important sections to include in your CV and a free CV template to download.

1.  Always include a picture

Especially now as most work is done remotely with video calls and presentations, it is important to include a picture. This is part of your personal branding and can help the recruiter see if your natural presentation fits the company culture and image. The best way to include your picture is in a circular frame in the top left hand corner of your CV. Keep if professional, business casual and with a neutral background allowing your face to be the focal point of the picture.

2. Separate your work experience from your education and skills

1.  Make sure you separate your work experience from your education and skills. You should have a column on the left hand side where you put your contact details, education, languages and skills. Then a bigger middle section with your work experience. This separation allows for quick reading and the ability for recruiters to distinguish between your experience and educational preparation for work.

3. Include a headline and personal profile section before your work experience

These extra sections will help you target your CV more accurately to the job you are applying to. Always adapt your headline to the job you are applying to. For example if you have experience in digital marketing and are applying to a performance marketing specialist role, change your headline to match the job title keywords, performance marketing specialist. This will help your CV rank higher in the keyword scanning systems recruiters use and increase your level of targeting to the job. The personal profile section should go underneath your headline, just before the work experience section. The personal profile should be a short 3-5 lines maximum summary of your experience, areas of expertise, and what you would bring to the future position you are applying to.

4. Add references

References add credibility to your experience and can help you stand out as a star candidate. The best references to include are from managers or from a direct colleague you worked closely with that you were able to achieve or improve important aspects of the business with. You should include the reference’s name, email address and a phone number so that the recruiter can easily reach them. Make sure to only add references that will have positive things to say about your previous work experience and be selective to include ones that have had the best experiences working with you. This will help your CV have a competitive advantage and perform better than CVs without any references.

5. When referring to the strengths or skills you have, use words instead of scales 

A lot of CVs when for example referring to skills such as level of proficiency with Photoshot or fluency in a language use a number of dots and add or subtract dots to represent the levels. This can be misleading for a recruiter as it’s difficult to distinguish the difference in proficiency between 3 or 4 dots. It would be better to use the phrases, beginner, intermediate, advanced, and native or expert when referring to a skill. This will avoid confusion for recruiters when evaluating your scale of competency with a certain skill or language proficiency. 

Feel free to use all of the strategies above to improve your CV as well as the free template and you will get results. If you need more personalized help, check out our CV editing service where a professional with experience in recruitment will edit your CV and optimize your experience to stand out for your field in the 2021 job market. Good luck with your job search! 

The questions you ask an interviewer are important and can show your level of motivation for a job position. They can also help you evaluate if the company culture and daily job requirements fit what you are looking for. It’s important to have some goals in mind in the interview stage and to think about what you are looking to get out of this new job opportunity. You will also be able to analyze the daily working environment and see if it suits how you work best. After all, you will be spending your weekdays there and it’s important to fill the time working on projects that will add value to your career and help you grow. These 3 questions outlined below are the best questions to ask an interviewer to show your motivation for the job and to also evaluate whether the position is right for you. 

1. What does an average day in this job look like?

This question shows forward thinking and evaluative skills. You are already analyzing what the job could look like and considering if the daily tasks of the job match what you are looking for. This question can also help you find out if the type of day you will have in the job fits how you work best, for example if you are more into jobs where you have a manager with daily meetings or for example if you prefer working with a little more independence, this question will help you judge whether the job aligns with your working style.

2. How do you measure success for this position?

A question about measuring success shows that you are curious about how the company you are applying to evaluates performance. Every company is different and it is important to understand what is considered successful and unsuccessful performance because this can vary depending on the companies and roles you apply to. Usually you will get answers in the form of metrics or KPIs (key performance indicators) and it’s important to understand how the metrics were created to analyze if the metrics are realistic and whether you will be able to meet them. 

3. What are some of the challenges I will face?

This question will help you understand the daily challenges of the job and what problem solving skills you will need to use to overcome them. It will also help you gain perspective on what tasks the company considers challenging and how they would solve them. You can also use this question to judge whether you are prepared to face the challenges of the role and if they are the type of challenges you would enjoy having to add value to your career. 

If you found this article useful, feel free to leave a comment below and let us know what questions you ask the interviewer. 

Manuel came to us in February, when COVID first started. He had just resigned from a job in aviation a month earlier with a plan to expand his career into transatlantic flights. However, as the pandemic worsened and more aviation bases shut down, it was clear that the plan he had set would not be possible.

Manuel needed help finding a transitory career related to his skills that would be able to last until he could get back into aviation and apply to work on transatlantic flights. His CV was mainly targeted to aviation related skills such as sales, customer service and inflight safety procedures. He also had impressive language abilities. With the help of the Career Next Steps CV editing service, Manuel’s CV was edited to target office jobs where his previous aviation experiences in customer service, sales and multi language abilities would make his application shine. 

Three weeks later with some additional coaching from the interview preparation, Manuel was able to successfully transition from aviation into an office job in customer experience at an international organization. Manual says, “I really appreciate the personalization of coaching, the CV editing and interview preparation services were adapted to my goals and helped me learn how to independently target my CV better to jobs and strengthen my job interview application.” 

Manuel is one of hundreds of professionals that were able to improve their job application strategy and land a job using Career Next Steps services. We would love to help you with your career goals and with any job transition you have in mind. Feel free to check out the services on the website and see how a job searching coach could benefit your career. 

Follow this guide with the top 5 interview questions and prepare your answers to ace your next job interview.

1. Tell me about yourself

Answer strategy: HAMK

1. How -How did you get here- What brought you to this interview?
2. Achievements– What have you already achieved related to this job?
3. Motivation– What has motivated you in the past and what is motivating you now that can benefit the company?
4. Kill-Show them why you are the best person for this job, your competitive advantage from other candidates

 Example Answer- Administration:

“I have relevant experience in administration and office management. The highlight of this time was when I was able to improve the efficiency of our invoicing system and collect over EUR 10.000 of unpaid invoices. I am looking for professional and personal growth and am constantly surrounding myself with talented people that I can learn from.

 I am also passionate about environmental issues and sustainability and my goal is to work in a company where I can use my skills and have a positive impact on the team and company.”

2. What’s your greatest weakness

Answer strategy: Focus on a non-essential skill, highlight skills you have improved, and turn a negative into a positive:

Example Answer:

“I used to have a tough time talking in front of groups of people which was difficult when I had to make presentations. I enrolled in public speaking training to try to improve my confidence, and now I’m much more comfortable talking in front of large groups.”

3.  Why should we hire you for this position?

Answer strategy: Show your motivation for working at the company and the unique skills you would bring to the position

Example Answer– Finance:

“Working for UNOPS for over a year, I realized how much I wanted to continue working for an agency which helped me to grow a lot, during my past experiences and to contribute to the realization of essential projects around the world.

Within UNOPS I worked in finance but it interrelated easily with more admin related tasks. I really liked processing data or finding ways to improve processes.”

4.  Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?

Answer strategy: Ideally, you want to show progression, either within a company or in your own career path as companies are looking for goal driven candidates

Example Answer:

“I would like to progress from a position in administration to become a manager or switch to another field within the company.”

5. How do you keep yourself organized?

Answer strategy: Give examples or concrete actions you take or procedures you set up to keep the team organized

Example Answer:

“I keep a daily diary to plan and prioritize what has to be done for the day and coming weeks. I also have regular meetings with supervisors and delegate tasks to the team members that are most suited to the task that needs to be completed.”

Finally, click here to download this free PDF with the top 5 interview questions so you can practise them anywere.

As millions of professionals flock to popular job searching websites to apply for jobs, try to find other ways to get in front of recruiters that will make your application stand out. Now more than ever is the time to start being creative with your job search and more personal with your applications. How will you get the attention of a recruiter if you are 1 in 200 applicants for a job on LinkedIn? Why not experiment with alternative platforms that are also used by recruiters and get more results? The strategies you are about to read are unconventional and adapted to the saturated COVID19 job market. Use these and I guarantee that you will reach more recruiters and eventually land a job.

1. Facebook Groups

Have you heard the saying that people attract others that are similar to them? Recruiters know this and will often rely on the network of their current employees to attract new talent. Facebook groups related to jobs, for example jobs in( insert your city) or expats in (insert your city) are where most recruiters post about an immediate job position they need to fill. Additionally, current employees of a company can also post about the latest open vacancies in these groups. Facebook groups are often more personalized than LinkedIn due to the social nature of the platform and often the time it will take to hear back from a recruiter in a Facebook group is much faster if you directly message the person that created the post. The best strategy to use in Facebook groups is to directly message the person posting and send over your CV to them by private message. This will avoid weeks of waiting to hear back from a recruiter on more traditional platforms and speed up your application time. 

2. Direct Messaging Recruiters on LinkedIn

If you are not ready to reach out to recruiters through Facebook messenger, why not try out the same strategy on LinkedIn? Instead of applying using the traditional way to job vacancies, search for top recruitment companies such as Michael Page, People First, Randstad ect, look at their employees on their LinkedIn Page and reach out individually to the recruiters in your city through LinkedIn private message with your CV. This is a good strategy because you are proactively contacting the recruiters and providing your candidature for jobs they need to fill. It is also more personal than applying to one job position that  thousands of other people are applying to.

3. Facebook Ads

Recently more recruiters are posting ads on Facebook for job positions they need to fill. The advantages of applying to jobs through Facebook ads is that there will be less people applying to the same vacancy. Instead of being 200 applicants for 1 position you will be no more than 50. You will just need to click on the ad and upload your CV. The wait time to hear back from a recruiter is shorter than a more traditional platform because Facebook ads create urgency for the recruiter to get back to you.

4, Referrals

Referrals are still extremely important. An applicant that arrives from a referral is much more valuable to a recruiter than a non referral applicant because they have already been pre screened by a member of the organization to fit the company culture and job requirements. If you can apply to a job with a referral from a manager or one of your friends who performs well at the company, it will greatly add to your application and chances of standing out as a star candidate. An easy strategy to get referrals if you do not have any friends at positions that are recruiting is to look out for posts in Facebook groups from current employees that are looking to refer someone for a position at their company. This strategy really works and can fast track your application over other candidates that are applying for the same position without a referral.

5, Going the Extra Mile After Applying on LinkedIn

Applying to jobs on LinkedIn is still a valid strategy however, you shouldnt only rely on LinkedIn when applying to jobs and adopt some of strategies outlined above to be more successful. If you do apply using LinkedIn, go the extra mile by finding the name of the recruiter for your region through the company profile you are applying to and reach out to them. You can message the recruiter to find out more details about the position and make sure it is suited for you, or  ask questions about the project goals and work environment. The extra effort you are making to reach out to the recruiter and proactively find out more information about the job shows that you are interested in the position. This extra effort will be noticed by the recruiter and form a personal connection that will help you get ahead from other applicants in the screening process

I hope you got some inspiration from these creative job application strategies, please comment below and share your results. Good luck with your job applications! 

So… You have spent the past month- including weekends – sending out hundreds of job applications… It’s difficult to remember all of the companies you applied to but you are confident that at least one of them will get back to you. A few days go by, a few more days, the days start turning into weeks and you start questioning your professional experience, maybe even your career choices but more importantly, the lack of response is getting a little bit frustrating.

Sound familiar?

If your answer is yes, have you been sending out the same CV to every company?