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The weekend is now upon us and if you are giving thought to updating your CV or currently refining it, here are some take away tips to ensure your CV packs a punch.

• Do include your contact details at the top of the CV – email address and phone number are especially important but also show the town or county where you live, this is because recruitment agency databases have location filters and settings.  Do not put your contact details as a header or a footer, these may not be seen on screen.
• The profile section – this should be a decent paragraph long, about 8-10 lines, use it wisely to incorporate key words which quickly convey who you are.  If you have experience with joint business plans, FOB sales, P&L or are CIM qualified then put this into the profile.  Include sector experience – grocery, retail, online, licensing, toys, nursery, gift.  Try to make the profile as informative and impactful as possible so avoid words without meaning.
• Career history – rather than simply stating what you have done, back it up with results and outcomes.  Make the words clear and concise e.g. ‘I was tasked with developing X account which was trading at Y value in 2019.  The account is now trading at Z value as a result of my BLANK’ – give a brief outline as to how growth was achieved.  Employers will be far more impressed by this rather than a ‘Grew Tesco by X% or £X’.
• Avoid setting out a job description, this could relate to anyone, your CV needs to be tailored to who you are, what you have done and what successes you have achieved.  The best way to accomplish this is to cherry pick some strong examples of responsibilities and achievements and back these up with facts and figures.  Think of the ones which you had to really work hard for, these say much more about you and your capabilities.  Stating things like ‘attending trade shows’ is not the best use of white space.
• Embrace white space.  Do not be afraid to have your CV clearly set out on 3 pages if it means using a font size the reader can easily see.  Avoid italics if possible, these strain eye sight.  Think about the person receiving your CV, they may have already read 50 or 100+ CV’s that week.  A CV which has each page crammed with text is not a pleasant prospect to look at, it may get put off to tomorrow then the next day and the next…
• If you need to use narrow margins for your CV to be on 2 pages do make sure the 2 pages have clear white space in them – otherwise use 3 pages.  Best font size is 12.
• Do include hobbies or interests but make them come to life with a little bit of information added to them.
• Be objective with your career history and really think ‘am I letting the person reading this CV know what I can do?  Am I telling them how I achieved this result?’  If you are not, then you run risk of a rejection.
• Employers want to know facts and figures so in order for your CV to really stand out you must clearly show achievements alongside actions.

Hopefully these pointers will set you on the right track to CV success. 

Happy weekend everyone.

In my interview prepping session today with a highly experienced sales professional, I threw into the mix the question ‘What kind of decisions are the hardest for you to make?’  This question proved a really challenging one for my candidate and the curve ball took them right off guard.

This is a prime example of how important preparation for interview really is – you just never know what question is going to come your way next.  Interviewers will deliberately test you to see how you react under pressure and how quickly you can respond with a sound answer – this curve ball question could the defining one between you getting the job offer or it going to another candidate.

As well as being familiar with your own CV, knowing the process which led to the achievements and results you have clearly conveyed in your CV, it is crucial to consider more testing questions such as behavioural and #situational ones. 

Speaking confidently about yourself and avoiding negative comments such as ‘I think’ is critical to interview success.  You are the sales person of your own career so own it and answer with confidence but not arrogance – nobody likes arrogance.

A few days prior to your interview, take time to plan, prepare and have a mock interview session.  This will amp up your confidence ratings for the big day and help you to avoid any awkward silences or fall into the trap of the challenging question designed to test your ability to think on your feet in a high-pressure scenario.

STAR – situation, task, approach, results

STAR is a helpful way of answering interview questions which are based around competency and behaviour, competency questions enable the candidate to speak freely in an interview.  If you have ever been asked ‘tell me about a time’ or ‘describe how you’ or ‘give me an example of’ this is competency questioning.  On the surface it is straight forward because you are openly speaking about real life scenarios however if you have made a statement on your CV which you are not able to personally give detail around, then it can trip you up and leave you exposed.  For people who are rusty with interview technique or new to the interview process then the STAR framework can help you however it is important to ensure you do not sound scripted in your answer delivery – you are being hired as a human being not a robot.

So how to use STAR to nail your competency interview questions

The STAR method helps you create an easy-to-follow story with a clear conflict and resolution.  Here’s what each part of the technique means:

S – Situation

Think of this section as ‘setting the scene’, you are laying out the narrative and giving context to the situation you handled, e.g

‘We were under a lot of pressure across the whole business to meet our Christmas delivery dates and everyone was beginning to feel quite stressed by it all, we knew if we could achieve our target that bonuses would be paid out so the pressure really was on’.

T – Task

Explain your action or responsibility in the role you played e.g.

‘As head of marketing although it is not my responsibility to get involved on the packing line, I understood this was an important and urgent matter so I communicated the urgency to my team and discussed with my other heads of department about what we could all do collectively to help achieve the target.’

A – Approach

Explain how you handled the situation.  If the action was carried out by a team, focus on your efforts.

‘After conveying this to everyone we all agreed we needed to support our warehouse operation, it was not fair to leave them to handle the pressure alone.  I took this to our MD and he supported my idea so I created a rota across all the departments freeing up certain team members across sales, marketing, finance and ops to go and lend a hand in the warehouse until all the shipment had been taken care of.’

R – Result

What was the outcome you reached through your actions? If possible, quantify your success or provide concrete examples of the effects of your efforts.

‘By providing extra helping hands we cleared the Christmas delivery two days ahead of schedule which was a good job because we had a sudden last minute order fly in for Amazon, if we had not cleared the Christmas backlog then the Amazon order would have been late.  We had a great time in the warehouse, it was a rally good team bonding experience and had a lovely festive feel, our MD joined us too, it really helped with fostering staff engagement and morale by everyone pulling together.’

Lastly

You may not know in advance if your interview is going to be a competency based one but the chances are it will be.  Don’t worry though because if you have been doing your job and are confident you possess the right skills for the role you are being interviewed for, you just need to think about work-related challenges and tasks you have gained experience in and exposure to.

Hopefully you will have received a job description for the role so you know what the hiring company is looking for.  Check through the criteria and make a list of your relevant experience and the outcomes of your actions – this will help convince the interviewer you have the right capabilities for the role.

It is ok to talk about times you have failed – we have all had some epic fails in our careers, we are only human but it is what we learn from our failures which sets us apart and shows how we handle set-backs.

Do not become rigid with the STAR framework, you must give a fluid interview where discussion flows rather than static answers drummed out.  Regardless of the situations and experiences you convey, make sure they clearly articulate about the situation, task, action and result but highlight your skills and achievements which best relate to the role you are applying.