CV WRITING SECRET SAUCE

To be honest I never thought I’d get so much response from my LinkedIn post!

To date it’s had something like 49,000+ views - (insane!) - when most of my usual
stuff hardly breaks a 1,000.

I went viral - must be down with the kids! ;-)

So, let’s get it on - let’s get you into the 1% top earner bracket.

...of course I can’t guarantee these tips will work.

But they’ll get you in the water & then it’s up to you how you ride the waves.

As I go through this advice I’ll use rough commercial language - if that’s not
your taste, then move along, there’s nothing for you here.

The number one thing I see on technical CV’s is that people over focus on their
technology, accreditations, roles etc.

“I have recently implemented VMware NSX, I have a VCP. I have storage.”

“I have a CCNA, have implemented a new firewall & would like to be a CCIE one
day.”

Woop dee doo.

Great, good on yer.

But this means jack to a business!

We live in a short termist, cut throat capitalist society.

Business wants to hear about benefit / value.

At the heart of benefit / value is making money, saving money or both.

Got Family? Nice person? Got bills to pay? Chance to get VCP accreditation?
Want’s this job because the commute is way easier?

Business hirers do not care.

...well they sort of ‘care’.

But only after they have established first - can this candidate make us money,
save us money or both?

The 1% candidates get those benefits / value adds into the CV.

“I implemented VMware NSX which resulted in £50,000 of physical network

hardware savings”.

“Lifted & shifted IT physical infrastructure into public cloud thus saving £1M in
projected savings over the next 5yrs”.

You get it?

Why does this work?

Because a potential hirer thinks this candidate is:

(A) technically competent

(B) if they come here, do those tech projects for us, we will get those benefits / value.

Simply put, they think this candidate could make us money, save us money or both.

It’s that simple!

It can’t be any coincidence that CIO’s, CTO’s - (who typically earn mega bucks) - are
technically strong but also know what value tech brings to a business.

Granted it’s not easy to write a CV this way.

It’s not something you can knock up in 5 mins.

BTW, you don’t have to do this for every single role you’ve ever had.

Just your current role & two back.

Not every single bullet point about your role has to mention a benefit / value.
Aim for about 2-3 benefit/value bullet points per role & mention them first!

Here’s some other CV writing tips:

(1) Word doc version please - PDF’s are painful to edit!

(2) Black text on a white piece of paper - this isn’t the design industry. Nice
normal font, size 11. No funky technical skill boxes please - again painful to
edit!

(3) Start Employment History with your current role & then work backwards
through all your jobs, (reverse chronological order).

(4) Don’t sweat it if length of CV goes over 2-3 pages in length - lots of hand
wringing, boiling the ocean & to be frank BS written on length of CV on the
internet - just shorten your first/oldest jobs to job title, who you worked for &
for how long. Hirers don’t care where you worked years ago but they do like to
see ‘progression’, if you follow me.

(5) Make sure you spell your tech & accreditations correctly - it’s not “VM aware”,
it’s not “Citrix ZenServer”. Spelling mistakes make you look like a muppet.

(6) Recruitment, talent acquisition, human capital management, whatever you

want to call it these days is very very very keyword driven. You can ‘game’ the
number of eyeballs viewing your CV by inserting job titles of roles you would
like in the future, bling tech keywords relevant to your niche, bling
accreditations you’d like to have, other leading/bleeding edge buzzwords, etc
into your CV. IT contractors are notorious for inserting lots of keywords in very
creative ways, <coughs> on their CV’s. More eyeballs, means more potential
recruiter calls, more CV’s out, more interviews, more potential offers, more
money in your pocket. But make you spell things correctly!

(7) Put a note in your diary every 3mths for a CV review session. Think what I
have done, what tech have I used & what business benefits/value have I
given. Do it every 3mths - it’s easy to forget what you’ve done!

(8) Don’t put ‘Curriculum Vitae’ at the top of the CV. We all know what it is! And
never ever ever put ‘Cirriculum Vitae’.

So - hope you’ve enjoyed this CV Writing Secret Sauce.

Of course I’ve done this for commercial gain.

Hey I’m a recruiter, it’s in my nature!

So, if you’re ever looking for a new role or are hiring, then feel free to connect with
me on LinkedIn at:

>>> https://www.linkedin.com/in/cloudawsazuremillshill/ <<<

!!! GOOD LUCK CV WRITING !!!

Neil Mills, Director

MillsHill Recruitment Ltd
01803 321233
nmills@millshill.co.uk