eCV helpful hints
Helpful hints to ensure your CV gets seen by prospective employers when you apply online.
The e-cv or e-resume, short for electronic CV or Resume, is a vital tool for today's job-seeker.
But what exactly is an electronic cv or resume? Whilst opinions vary about what is or is not an electronic cv, it's a broadly used term that covers several types of cv's. What ties these cv types together is mode of delivery. Rather than traditional modes of cv delivery - snail-mail, faxing, and hand-delivery - e-cv's are delivered electronically -- via e-mail, submitted to Internet job boards, or residing on their own Web page. Then there are sort of middle-tech cousins of e-cv's, scannable cv's - used less and less frequently these days - that are in print format but are ready to become electronic cv's through optical scanning.
- 1. You absolutely MUST have one.
- 2. Your e-cv must be loaded with keywords.
- 3. Your e-cv must be achievements-driven .
- 4. An e-cv is not too difficult to create.
- 5. Text-based e-cv's are pretty ugly, but you can dress them up a bit.
- 6. E-Cv's are highly versatile.
- 7. You must tailor the use of your e-cv to each employer's or job board's instructions.
- 8. Take advantage of job-board features to protect yourself and get the most out of posting your e-cv on the boards.
- 9. A few finishing touches can increase your e-cv's effectiveness.
- 10. Use your common sense
2. Your e-cv must be loaded with keywords.
This advice really relates to all cv's in the era of the keyword-searchable database, but it's especially important for e-cv's. Job-hunting today increasingly revolves around the mysterious world of keywords. Employers' use and eventual dependence on keywords to find the job candidates they want to interview has come about in recent years because of technology. Inundated by resumes from job-seekers, employers have increasingly relied on digitising job-seeker cv's, placing those cv's in keyword-searchable databases, and using software to search those databases for specific keywords that relate to job vacancies.Most top companies, in fact, and many smaller companies now use these technologies. In addition, many employers search the databases of third-party job-posting and cv-posting boards on the Internet.
The bottom line is that if you apply for a job with a company that searches databases for keywords, and your cv doesn't have the keywords the company seeks for the person who fills that job, you are pretty much out of luck.
