“Send us your CV & we’ll get back to you”.
Every job search starts with a CV. The deciding factor?
A good CV gets your foot in the door and a not-so-good CV denies you entry forever. If you want to get hot callbacks and irresistible offers after submitting applications, follow these 4 mega tips.
1. Swap Objective for Executive Summary
Gone are the days of winning recruiters over with well-written career objectives. An executive summary is a preview of the value you bring, the results you can deliver & the problems you can solve.
As the first thing recruiters see on your CV, it’s silly to waste precious real estate on sentences that fall flat. Milk this under-utilised space to play up your years of experience, niches, specialisations, regional field experience, client portfolio, recent certifications, awards/titles, and fluent languages.
This section is an elevator pitch to your future employer. If they find it a stale, copy-paste job, they won’t read on. It doesn’t matter then if you have a 90% qualifications match, you can wave the offer goodbye.
2. Use Keywords Sparingly
Stuffing your CV with too many keywords breeds overstated duties and steals the spotlight from deliverables and value add statements. You can also appear overqualified and miss out on an opportunity altogether.
A better approach is to pick out common keywords, hard and soft skills, and adjectives from multiple job listings (check sites such as LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Naukri Gulf, Dubai-jobs.me, etc.) and artfully weave them into your work experience and summary sections.
You can never go wrong with incorporating universal requirements for your targeted position.
3. Add Meaty Metrics
Most job-seekers miss out on adding metrics to their CV because they just cannot recall everything they’ve done.
To counter this, whenever you start a new position, maintain a Google docs to record all your wins. Create a pool of performance reviews, project reports, emails, and client/coworker feedback.
Here are some brain-storming ideas to get you started:
- What steps did you take to resolve a problem/challenge?
- Did you lead a team/project? How did you contribute to the outcome?
- Did you propose any new ideas?
- Did you reduce costs or optimize budgets? What were the tangible savings?
- Did you improve customer satisfaction or client relationships? By how much?
- What processes did you streamline/automate? What were the efficiency gains (e.g. time/cost savings).
- Did you undertake initiatives to improve product/service quality?
- Did you mentor/train juniors? How did you increase development or performance?
Start each achievement with banger verbs such as expedited, overhauled, systematized, coached, and advocated. Zero in on the volume of the deliverable/solution, timeframe, number of team members/clients, and figures on revenue, market expansion, customer success.
Also read: MoE launches next phase of recognising foreign university certificates with new system
Your final result should look like this:
“Piloted Agile projects using Azure DevOps and JIRA, resulting in a 10% increase in project delivery speed and an 8% reduction in project costs.”
4. Tap AI to Assist
Let AI do the heavy lifting for you while you create and polish your CV.
Give prompts to:
- Generate industry-specific action verbs and adjectives.
- List job responsibilities reflecting key deliverables for your targeted role.
- Reorder responsibilities and skills from most to least important.
- Convert sentences into present or past tense.
- Check your CV for grammar, readability, and consistency.
Add the human touch by co-writing with Claude, Copilot or copy.ai.
After a fresh stroke of proofreading and a splash of formatting, your CV is ready to hit send.
Every job search starts with a CV. Are you starting yours the right way?
Also read: Why an ATS-friendly resume is crucial for landing your next job
Shabbir Kagalwala is co-founder of www.Dubai-Forever.Com since 2009. He has more than 19 years’ experience in writing CV’s, Resume’s, and LinkedIn Profiles, professionally. A Master’s from XLRI, India, in Human Resources, and 10 years of experience in hiring and recruiting in the GCC and India, gives him an edge in writing CV’s that lead to interview calls. To read more about him, CLICK HERE.
A ‘Top Resume Writing Voice’ on LinkedIn, he is a regular contributor to collaborative articles on various platforms.
