How Do I Sell Myself?

Getting hired for the first time is an exciting prospect for any fresh graduate and it sometimes seems that all you need to do is write a CV using a template downloaded from the Internet and the next day you will receive numerous job offers you won’t be able to reject. Nevertheless, any experienced job-seeker is aware of the fact that it doesn’t work like this. At some point everyone faces the problem that however skilled you are, it’s just impossible to get past the first barrier of the recruitment process to the stage at which you are actually interviewed. Let’s consider the reason why this happens.

So, where do you post your resumes? Naturally, the most popular choice is an online job board. And where do you think your CV goes from there? Unfortunately, the desk of your potential employer, whose requirements totally match your qualifications, is not its next destination. The fact is, they arrive at a massive database and end up covered by a giant pile of your competitors’ resumes. Moreover, job boards tend to cooperate and share CV’s creating a universal work force bank available for all the recruiters in the region, which for the companies means a bigger choice of candidates, and for you this means even a more fierce competition. Thus it becomes quite logical that unless you have very unique and desirable skills, the odds of scoring a job interview in a traditional way approach zero.

As you can see, the issue to work on is how to make your resume stand out among the infinite number of others. Unfortunately, in the rapidly developing online segment of the labour market your qualifications aren’t enough and they aren’t even the key factor in job seeking. Headhunters browse listings of potential employees using keywords and you can only target a huge share of recruiters by optimizing your resume to the search-through. For that matter, creating a ‘keyword’ section at the top of your CV alongside with ‘education’ and ‘work experience’ ones would be a perfect solution. The body of it would be just constituted by a block of words separated with commas and should include all the relevant skills. It’s also a good idea to include synonyms and different spellings of your qualifications. Don’t worry if your CV doesn’t look very appealing because of this – it’s essential to please search engines here. On the other hand, it’s also recommended to dub your ‘machine-version’ resume with a human-friendly one and keep it in your desk until you come across an opportunity to contact an employer directly. In that case it’s always useful to pair it up with a personalized cover letter.

Another advantageous invention of the modernity is a social resume. This work in a pretty simple way – your profiles on social networks like Facebook or Twitter should also reflect the sides of your personality which might draw recruiters’ attention. For instance, on your social page you could specify your current occupation, language skills, work-related interests etc – these improvements enable tracking candidates by tags on social media accounts for headhunters. Also, creating a LinkedIn account can enhance your job hunting significantly. In addition, it makes a lot of sense to design a personal landing page, which is a simple website that is linked all of your SM profiles or blogs and may display any certificates you would like to share.

To sum up, you can insure being invited to a job interview sooner by three simple improvements:

• Optimize your resume to search engines
• Create a classical paper resume
• Develop a social resume

Notwithstanding, do not forget that you can increase your chances to succeed by applying with different companies yourself. Check out current job offers at Localmart.