8 TIPS TO MAKE YOUR CV APPEALING

They say ‘Your first impression is your last impression’ but then they also say ‘Never judge a book by its cover’. We say stop confusing yourself with these phrases and figuring out what is right and start to find a middle ground that suits both. We are here with this blog to help you save yourself from constant confusion about making your cv upto the mark. 
The traditional times are gone where people simply jotted down their achievements on a piece of paper and applied at different firms. Today, with the rising competition in all parts of the world has made candidates so competitive in nature. There has been a significant change in the ways and levels of interviews conducted, the shortlisting process, candidates ways of forming impression and so much more. CV making has seen a creative shift as candidates started customising their CVs to stand out of the bunch. We don’t see a reason about why you should stay a step behind in flaunting your experience creatively. Wondering how you can ensure that? Grab a book and a pen so you don’t miss on pointers that will ease CV making in creative style for you.

Here are a few tips to make an eye-catching CV and go that extra mile to form an impression in the eye of the organisation you wish to work with and also make room for your creativity.

1.Know your competition.

It’s always fruitful to have a fair understanding of your competitor. Know who you are standing against, learn what ways people from your field are adapting to approach these organisations. To stay one step ahead you need to know theirs. Do research about the ways they are designing their CV. For example, if you’re someone from the creative field, google how there are different CV’s designed by candidates in your field. At the same time if you are someone with practical knowledge, learn the priority of the CV flow, i.e, to see where the information, experience and achievements are best placed to make an appealing CV.

2. Learn the priority flow

Everybody has their own way of going about their CV and prioritise information on the basis of their job profile. This is one of those things where you need to be aware of what the interviewer should know first about you. Say you have experience in diverse fields that could work well in your favour for the new job, you might want to put that first. If you lack in experiences but have a good record of extra curricular activities that have helped you build your personality, place it on the CV accordingly, maybe in the first few segments itself but make sure to put the educational information first. Be well versed with your experiences and choose to flaunt them by organising your CV format. Just in case you want to start it off simple here’s a CV making tip with standard CV format for you to follow. 1. Personal information.
2. Personal profile. 3. Career Summary. 4. Educational details. 5. Work experiences. 6. Skills & Achievements. 7. Hobbies/ Interests. 8. Reference (if any).

3. Customise the look.

Nothing is as good as making your resume have that authentic touch. Standard formats are usual but isn’t standing out always a competition? There have been candidates adapting creative ways to express the most on the CVs. These creatively designed CV formats are in the form of presentation, animated a lot more. Let us explain this better. Say if the job applicant is a graphic designer, they can customise their CV by illustrating their work in designing an attractive CV. This is most applicable to candidates coming from a creative field of work since they can experiment quite some creativity with their resumes.

4. Highlight your achievements.

We humans have the tendency to skim through any article or information before we start reading it. The study suggests that an organisation receives around 250 applications out of which 4-5 are called for an interview and only one gets selected. To make an eye-catching CV you might want to highlight your growth and changes that must have occurred due to past experiences so the reader/HR is bound to read that first while skimming through your resume. Highlight words that talk about your traits, your growth in work life, your abilities to manage your work, any exceptional quality you have to perform your work task, and many such things. This will increase your chances of getting shortlisted as compared to a plain standard CV format.

5. Treat organisations differently.

We suggest don’t keep on circulating the same standard CV to all the companies. Do a small research, learn about their working modules and what they expect out of their candidates, scroll through their websites. This will help you have a deeper understanding of the organisation you’re applying for and help you customise your CV professionally for them. This practice will enable you to design and articulate all the details about your previous experiences in the way that might be appreciated by the organisations since you did your research well on how the company functions. Click here to check out relevant organisations for your job profile to drop your CVs for newer beginnings.

6. Talk about Insights.

Facts are some of the richest knowledge you can have on yourself. Your experience talks when your conversation talks about the insights you’ve gained from these experiences. So while you prepare your CV and talk about various experiences, do make sure to talk about insights, results gained rather than going on and on about how responsible you are. Although that bit is important, it won’t serve the purpose completely. So fuse in insights, and effective results you’ve gained, knowledge you’ve perceived from previous experience and more. This step will ensure that your CV has major aspects covered that an organisation will look for in your CV.

7. Don’t forget to proofread.

You may feel like all the essential information is in place but it’s best to be thorough with your resume. After you have filled in all the information, chosen your template, fixed the final layout and font, go through your entire CV thoroughly to see if there are any errors found. Ensure that you have cross checked the dates of your experience in the previous organisation, do you have letters to back up that information and if it is ready to attach, if the spellings are written correctly, so on and so forth. This practice will eliminate further possibilities of regrets or embarrassment when you are dealing with the interviewer in the interview session. You can be stressed free and not worry about correcting errors verbally as it may become awkward to do so.

8. Save your CV file with a decent name.

It sounds like a minute detail but this is where we all tend to slip up. While we attach our CV file with the cover letter, we overlook the fact that the Cv file will read the name you have saved it with. You don’t want your CV name to be like CV draft 1, cv document size 63kb, my cv, or any such vague names. Just mention your Job profile in the cv name and save the file. If you have picked a template from the internet it is okay to send across the file in pdf format but if you have created it from the start, share it in word format. This will help the recruiter make minor changes in the format before passing it forward (if they have standard format followed in the company). Sending it in word format will ease out this editing task for them.

Summarised CV making tips 

Making a CV/ Resume has changed over the years and it's not as simple as  it once was. Standard is boring, creativity is never out of trend. The process is not as complex as the outcome may look like. Make your CV look effortless, keep researching about various ways to fill in basic details. It is about doing the simple thing different than what the mass does that will make you stand out. Give your personal touch to it, when the HR or interviewer reads your CV they should be able to perceive a small idea about your personality or what you must be like. Take your chances with experimenting new things, be unconventional with your approach, but make sure to not overdo anything. Balance is the key. If you feel too confused about it, go with the standard format first, jot down all the necessary details in it and then start tweaking the look of the CV. That way you won’t miss your important details and also secure the look of your professional CV. Also, if you are a fresher, feeling all of this is too much to process, the job, and the approach to secure a job you might want to learn about how to be a pro fresher? Don’t you worry Gorewo got you all covered even with job placements  so before you leave the page, do check what Gorewo has in store for you. If you want more tips about career related topics do let us know in comments below and we shall be here to your rescue. Have a pleasant day!