Why is your CV being ignored by employers?
This is a common problem among fresh graduates. You are a capable, experienced person. With confident, you send your CV to a dozen or more companies, but none of them respond. You end up choosing the job you don’t quite like. Why is that?
There are many possible reasons such as your appearance, training, personality, emailing skills, interviewing skills… But in this article AMVN will focus on the “first look” of the candidate, how to let the employer open your CV and not leave it aside as they did.
Before digging deeper, you need to understand what a CV is.
What is CV?
CV stands for the English term Curriculum Vitae, and can also be known as Resume. A CV is a summary of yourself that is mainly used when applying for jobs and is considered an important and indispensable element in a resume. CV is considered as an introduction, showing your capabilities and desires, it is where you introduce yourself to customers who are employers during job application interviews.
How to write a CV
1. CV layout
a. Color
– The colors used in your CV will also show that you are a creative person with good thinking skills, especially for industries that require high level of creativity such as design and software development, advertising, etc. A color scheme for your CV will be a way you can score points with the employer.
Thus, it can be seen that the selection and color scheme in the CV plays an extremely important role that candidates should not ignore if they do not want to lose their job opportunities.
Notes:
- Don’t use too many colors
- Putting too many colors on the CV shows a lack of professionalism, making it difficult to for the employer to read its content It is best to limit to a maximum of 3 color tones in a CV.
- High contrasting colors in CV
- Contrasting colors needs to be clear to ensure readability. You should not use pink with red, brown with black, white with gold… Another thing you should notice with coordinating colors here is that you should use bold colors for headings, CV frames for employers to easily grasp the key information. As for the parts containing text content, you should use lighter colors to help the content stand out.
b. Layout
CV content is usually divided into two typical categories:
Top – bottom
Content is expressed over time from introduction, training, education, work experience, skills, interests…
- Note:
The contact information should be on the left or right margin to help recruiters see them easily and contact you if they find it suitable.
2 columns
Divide the content into 2 columns, usually 1 column will be information, goals, soft skills, awards achieved… And the other should be your training program, summary of work experience.
The second layout is now widely in use for the candidate can fit all their information on one page and employers can easily see everything with a glance.
c. Personal photo
A CV containing a photo of the candidate let the employer learn something about the candidate they are about to recruit. Therefore, setting out a position to insert your photo in the CV is absolutely necessary, which is also something you should learn before making and creating your own CV.
The best photo to put on your CV should be as polite as possible in your opinion as most employers will opt for bright and sympathetic photos.
The best place to put photos should be at the top of the CV, like an offline recruitment session, the first thing that leave a good impression for the recruiter is your appearance. Putting it in the middle of the body or at the bottom of your CV won’t help when you include a photo.
2. Content:
Your CV must be relevant to the company you are applying for
While completing the above steps is the basic requirement for a CV, what really matters is the content inside. No matter the layout, if the content inside is not suitable for the company you are applying for, your chance of success can be quite dim.
Also, when it comes to background and work experience, focus on your highlights that are relevant to the company you’re applying for.
Example of a typical failure:
- You apply for an experienced designer position, but your CV only states your experience of working as a receptionist in large companies, without mentioning anything about the related field.
- It is also not necessary to add your family members to the CV.
No matter how much experience you have, it is still advisable to summarize your CV to a maximum of 2 pages. The fact that you write too much also shows that you do not know how to synthesize information. It is best to leave additional information for the direct interview with the employer.
Refer to some CV samples (Link)
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