The CV Experts Blog

We’ve seen many a project management CV over the years in our capacity as providers of professional resume and CV writing services.  Some have been okay, others dire.  One common problem however always seems to be the shear length of them.  PMs typically market themselves just through a list of past projects as they feel these are the touchstones of their ‘proposition’ to a prospective employer.  The problem is if for example, most of the other 91 applicants for the position all submit similar CVs which comprise mainly of a long, historical list of all projects managed.  This leads to very little in differentiating the applicants if they’ve all been delivering projects at a similar level.  One very accomplished technical PM had never possessed a professional resume before, but decided to have his self-penned effort looked at by an IT CV writing service, leading him to our door.  He’d been working in a freelance capacity for over 15 years, and although his contracts usually only lasted between 6 and 12 months, on each occasion he’d been commissioned through professional networks and/or approached directly.  This meant his CV invariably wasn’t competing against others and served only as a record of past activities, thus ‘bolting on’ every new project to a CV originally written in 1992.   The result was a document that was long-winded (five pages), outdated (the technologies listed) and visually very unappealing.  He now needed to market himself properly for future contracts, hence his approach to professional resume and CV writing services.  Once we began working with him, we needed to start from scratch authoring his new CV – kicking off firmly with his CURRENT skill set.  We wanted to show the reader exactly how his superlative leadership skills could be deployed to drive the project lifecycle from cradle to grave with authority and precision.  We also wanted to demonstrate his heightened technical acumen and specialist knowledge.  His new professional resume pitched him heavily in the PRESENT tense in terms of how he can go in and govern heavyweight projects to fuel modernisation, transformation or evolution of technology.  His past achievements could then be consolidated in a much more streamlined and succinct way to simply back up his newly presented lifecycle skill set and personal brand.  It was simply a case of reinterpreting his long project history into a modern, tighter selling tool.

Are you like one of the many high-calibre individuals who has simply outgrown your CV?  TheCVExperts is here to equate the balance.  TheCVExperts applies a very rapport-driven, professional approach to transforming and modernising your CV, communicating and collaborating with you every step of the way.  Whatever your level, function or objective, The CV experts manages each CV solution as a bespoke project from inception to completion.

The following areas are where we have a competitive edge:

• Permanent Middle to Senior Management
• Interim Management
• MDs, CEOs & Board Directors
• Project & Programme Management
• High-level IT Professionals
• International Applications

You can contact TheCVExperts Team by email or telephone.  Many of our clients come to us without clear-cut objectives, so we can help you define those as part of the package.  If you like what we propose, we will arrange your CV consultation by phone or in person.  Topics covered include your USPs, career achievements and milestones, credentials and full array of skills.  The first draft will be ready in approximately a week, and we’ll keep refining it until you’re ecstatic with no time restrictions.

Check out our web site www.thecvexperts.com for details on the free CV review offer, as well as a gallery of live, unedited screen-prints of past client feedback.  When you’re as confident as we are in our own abilities, there really is nothing to hide!

Advice on applying to the right person- should it be addressed directly to the boss?

It should be addressed to the individual named within the advert, but if no-one is named then a call to the organisation’s switchboard or the agency involved may get you the right name and win you a brownie point or two.

Should you send your CV speculatively?

Yes do, but research the organisation first to see if your experience is likely to match their requirements otherwise you’re wasting your time. Either send it to the boss or the head of the relevant department – web sites often hold this information within their “Our Team” page.

Should you send a hard copy, digital or both?

Most companies today only want digital, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t send a covering letter as well. By sending them a confident and well-pitched email to state your intentions and introduce your attached CV, you will already have the edge over other candidates who only sent the latter.

When should you follow this up?

No hard and fast rule, but three weeks is usually a safe bet following an advertised vacancy, whereas a speculative application can be chased one week later. With the latter, enquire politely if they have received your CV and whether there might be any openings imminently.

Where is the line between chasing and pestering?

There is certainly a fine line between the two, especially during a recession when organisations are struggling to cope with truckloads of applications, many of which totally irrelevant to their needs. Use your initiative and you’ll pick up on when to back away and leave it to them to reply.

Should you do more work than asked for in an interview- should you do a presentation if they haven’t asked me too?

Not unless they’ve asked you. That doesn’t mean however that you can’t sew into the interview “a few points I’ve made on why I feel I’m suitable”. Employers are often keen to hear how you propose tackling the job, and it’s important you explain your absolute willingness to listen and learn before you start trying to change everything. Interviewers become concerned by people who appear to have all the answers before they have asked all the questions.

How much research should you do on the company?

It is relatively easy now to research most companies on the Internet, Wikipedia and the like, and viewers of last year’s The Apprentice will have seen how you can unravel if you haven’t. Don’t overdo it though, otherwise your head will be swimming on the day (no need to memorise performance metrics from the past 20 years!). It’s important to have an understanding of the organisation’s key values, ethos and mission – clearly articulating this to the interviewer is paramount.

It’s not (all) about the technology!  If you have a successful career in IT, you know that your technical skills are crucial to landing any new contract or job offer, so it is understandable if you make them prominent in your CV and cover letter.  Many of those who read your CV are themselves technology people.  But this carries great risks, especially if you want to progress to more senior levels of management.  Why? The answer lies in the role of technology in business (and in public sector bodies).  Most organisations do not exist in order to create new technology – they use it to achieve their aims more effectively.  So, if you have delivered, for example, a new CRM solution to an insurance client, you have helped them to maximise the value of their customers.

For  CTO/CIO positions and similar roles, it is essential to break out of the IT-centric mindset.  You need to show how you have added value to the places where you have worked.  This can never be done in isolation – we have all met technically brilliant developers who cannot be allowed to get near clients.  Anyone aspiring to leadership roles needs to show the proof that they can work effectively with others – there is no point in turning in a project within deadline and to budget if you have failed to talk to the client and end users and so have misunderstood what they really needed the technology to do.

As you reach more senior managerial responsibilities, you become one of the team of people who should be working together to support each other in driving the organisation forwards.  This requires the ability to form alliances, understand others’ agendas and be canny about how you deploy your resources for the sake of others.  So it is crucial to address stakeholder engagement prominently in your CV.

Vendor and supplier management is another skill which is well worth emphasising – it is a great example of an essential activity which draws on technical knowledge, people skills and commercial awareness all at once.  Fail to show any side of these transferable skills, and you have failed to paint the whole picture.

The list of your technical skills is still an important part of your CV – but remember that there is a lot more to an effective IT CV.  Show that you can deal with people and contributed to the success of the whole organisation, and you are well on your way to standing out above the competition.

What makes a good senior level PM CV? Hiring executives are looking for someone who can manage several fronts concurrently, a person who can take a project from proposals and planning through to final handoff. Whether in consulting, senior technical or in software development project management, first and foremost one must illustrate the ability to manage. That means having the ability to manage budgets, methodologies, people and other resources.

The team management is critical, as is driving individuals to succeed in on-time, on-budget delivery for each and every project. As a PM, this means project planning, establishing deployment procedures, budgeting, reviewing processes and systems, managing risk and continuous project monitoring.

Collaboration is another key factor in executive grade PM roles. Oftentimes, relationship building means stakeholder management, vendor negotiations and management, liaising with consultants, joining forces with various business units within an organisation and forging long lasting relationships outside of the company.

Communication with stakeholders and team members is essential. A great PM must be able to gain quick understanding of a client’s needs and industry, establish trust capital quickly and keep all relevant parties apprised of changes in project parameters till completion.

Highlight areas of technical speciality, but by no means should you use your CV to itemise each and every platform, language, system, infrastructure, network etc. As a seasoned Project Manager, it is a given that most of the hands-on work is delegated to project teams to execute, therefore only highlight technical or specialist acumen. Any other points can be discussed at interview in greater detail.

Under career history, focus on some figures. Prospective employers want to know not only the scope of responsibilities, but also the budgets managed, how many people managed, methodologies used and what types of projects that have been managed. Lastly, give results; numbers make a big difference.  How has performance improved? Costs been cut? Revenue streams built?

Visit The CV Experts for a Professional Management CV.

When, as it is alleged, the Chief of the British Armed Services, was informed via the Sunday Times that the new Defence Secretary had sacked him he must have felt totally gutted. What a way of thanking someone for 40 years’ service at the highest level for their country. What a totally gutless way, if it is true, of telling him.

How often we come across similar stories when people are made redundant. ‘We all got an email just before we went home one Friday.’ Or, ‘I found an envelope on my desk giving me the bad news but my manager had disappeared to a meeting offsite.’ Probably just as well. Or, ‘I received a letter on the Saturday telling me not to come in on Monday.’

Redundancy always hurts no matter how the news is broken to you. Even when it is handled with care and courtesy by a really kind, caring manager the end result is the same – no job and your whole life devastated, your self confidence knocked, your monthly salary gone. Even if you pick up a really good civil service type gold plated redundancy package you still have no job – just a bit more breathing space in which to find the next one.

And that is what you have to do – find the next one, fast. But first you have to re-order your thoughts and face the immediate future. You have to be very positive and forget the past. You are among thousands who are redundant or being made redundant and you have to somehow ensure that you stand out from the rest. You already have a new interim job – it is called job hunting. It is commission only – you only get paid on success.

A few pointers. What next? More of the same or is this your opportunity to do something completely different, to break out, to go into a different business sector, or work overseas or to turn a hobby into a job. Perhaps you want to plough something back into society via the paid voluntary sector or, by becoming, say, a teacher or a nurse or a social worker. The pay might not be as good in any of these but the job satisfaction, and often the job security and the guaranteed pension might be much better. You might become an Interim Manager.

You will need to analyse your skills, preferably with outside help, to achieve your new ambition or to find your new job if you decide to remain in the same sort of work. And you will need an outstanding CV to get you to interview; which of course, is where we can help. Contact The CV Experts today for a Professional CV Service.

If you are a scientist, a medical doctor or a university professor then you are likely to have two important lists which are essential for your credibility in your particular fields.

The first is your list of publications. In many sectors of these fields it is important to have published the results of researches, often co-authored with other experts. There is an established protocol for the way in which these are set out and many add to their lists year on year as their work and careers progress.

The second list is of the national and international conferences to which people are invited as keynote speakers. All experts are invited to speak about their expertise at numerous events or venues from school classrooms upwards. The conferences referred to here are recognised annual or occasional gatherings of national or global experts. The implication is that you too are a recognised expert if you are invited to make one of the keynote speeches.

We come across CVs that have many pages of Publications and Conferences – one such recent offering ran to 29 pages. Who is going to have time to read that? We were able to reduce the CV to five crisp pages the fourth page being publications and the fifth listed the conferences. The trick is to prioritise your lists and prune them, if humanly possible, to not more than one page each. These lists can always be adjusted for any particular application to ensure that the most relevant information, likely to appeal to the reader, is prominently displayed.

Scientists include not just people at lab benches. Within this come many computer experts who have a wide ranging detailed knowledge of their subject because of development work they carry out. Their addenda is less likely to be on Publications and Conferences but to list all the platforms and programmes with which they are familiar. Because the initial screening of many CVs is done using Wordsearch it is very important that all the relevant buzzwords appear in their addenda.

The importance of these addenda is that they do not easily fit into the main body of the CV which focuses on skills and achievements and the chronology of your life. At the end of the CV they reinforce those skills and achievements and to the expert reader often add the ‘wow’ factor. ‘I didn’t realise he/she had written that or been at that conference. I must meet him/her.’

Having trouble with your CV? Contact The CV Experts today for a
Professional CV Service.

What is the biggest mistake people make when writing a CV for management positions? You probably expect it to be something basic like spelling mistakes, or emphasising your primary school gold stars at the expense of your MBA. While these are both fundamental errors capable of landing you in the recruiter’s reject pile, a much worse problem is starting from the wrong place – you as an individual.

But surely this is my CV, you may be thinking. It should be about me, right? Wrong – at least, if you think about yourself in isolation. Management, after all, is all about achieving results by making people and processes work effectively. All successful managers should be able to show achievements which impact on much more than themselves as individuals.

So, when you are considering what will sell you best into the management job market, ask yourself the following questions about your career history:

• Who benefitted most from my best management decisions?
• What positive legacy have I left behind me on exit from previous positions?
• How do I know when my direct reports understand what they have to do and are working well? How did I get them there?
• What have I changed for my customers/clients (these can be within your organisation)?
• How do I know when I have been successful (this can be measured by other metrics than numbers, for example positive customer feedback)?

Look at each of your major assignments or job roles from this perspective, and you are looking at your effectiveness as a manager through other people’s eyes. Show recruiters what you can do from this viewpoint, and you are well on the way to being someone who must be interviewed. Our professional cv writing service is ideal for your management cv creation.

Before you start an interim management assignment how long can you expect it to last? When this writer ran an Interim Consultancy he put two urgently needed top executives into a government agency for six weeks. They stayed for nearly three years. It really is as variable as that. The downside is that you will be on perhaps a week’s notice only. From the client’s point of view you do not appear on headcount but you are vulnerable to any sudden downturn in his business or maybe a change of direction or instructions issued by some distant head office or parent company. Just make sure you get your references agreed before you depart.

On the other hand if you are doing a good job you will find other directors and managers contacting you asking you to let them know when you have finished your current work. They have something they would like you to handle. It is much easier for them to use your inside knowledge and increasing credibility than to bring in another outsider. You have become a valued member of the team. It is where interim management becomes very fulfilling.

A starting point for interim assignments is to go to the website of the Interim Management Association, www.interimmanagement.org.uk. Get your CV registered with as many of their members as possible. These are specialist Interim Recruitment firms which keep data bases of people like you with which to fill clients’ urgent needs. Unlike ordinary recruitment which may take up to three months, Interim Managers have been known to be in post within three days of being contacted. The need is often urgent.

Virtually all of them will require you to have your own limited company or to invoice through an umbrella company. This is so that you can be paid gross and that neither the client nor the recruitment consultancy can be held liable by HMRC for your tax. You are advised to Google IR35 which will give you a host of sites on tax for self employed contractors, Gordon Brown’s incredibly ill conceived IR35 tax, and umbrella companies which, for a modest fee, will invoice your clients on your behalf and sort out the taxman to maximise your earnings.

Once registered follow up with a phone call (as you should whenever you send anyone your CV). In many cases you may only get a response from someone junior but if you can speak to a consultant and start building a rapport it can be very helpful for both parties. Don’t ask for an assignment. Just ask for advice on your CV, on where else you should be looking and on the consultant’s view of the market? People love being asked for advice. Don’t you? Likewise send your CV to all your personal network and let them know what you are up to.

Thereafter keep the contact alive by updating your CV and resubmit it at regular intervals particularly when an assignment is nearing its end. Many Interim Managers add a page to their CV to summarise their interim assignments and highlight the growing range of their skills and achievements in different sectors. At CV Experts some of us have personal experience as interim managers and can offer constructive advice. We can rejig your CV to reflect your experience in a way that will appeal to most interim recruitment consultants.

Jane, a PR/marketing guru who has previous experience working for both commercial and charitable organisations, had quite a diverse professional history with a background in creative copy writing, speech writing, production for radio and television programmes, leadership coaching, speaker consultancy work and even administrative experience. She was looking for a position as an Interim Head of Marketing and wanted a CV to strategically target this.

Bringing Jane’s current CV up to date and listing all of her key leadership attributes whilst extracting pivotal information to leverage her PR/marketing/event management capabilities into consultancy positions was quite the task. More emphasis needed to be placed on her previous employment as a full time Public Relations Manager for a London-based agency, as this experience spanned 15 years with significant accomplishments.

Jane enlisted the help of The CV Experts to assist her in finding a central focal point and restructuring an ineffectual and disorganised existing CV that just wasn’t getting her any phone calls to interview.

The task of streamlining this rather incongruent work history to emphasise her pivotal strengths and vast experience in marketing took some collaborative strategising between her and her us. Her expertise in formulating effective PR models and corporate communications programmes were vital, as were the successful outcomes of all of her campaigns.

Through an in-depth conversation with Jane, we readily gathered that she was brilliant with people and exudes a confident, outgoing and charismatic personality that fosters immediate credibility with people. She uses her infectious sense of humour to rally people and has a communication style that resonates with her audiences. These qualities—along with her creative specialities including speech writing, script writing and public speaking—are intrinsic to the value she brings to the table and were a must to include in her CV.

By identifying and unifying seemingly unrelated strengths from her previous CV, we were able to shift focus to the value she offered through her diverse career path and understanding of people.