The UAE’s best kept secrets to landing that dream job & salary through a CV/Resume!

I have spent close to 6 years crafting CV & resume’s, revamping, improving, transforming and even starting from scratch, writing thousands of CV & Resumes. It is safe to say it’s in my blood.

Part of my success does come from my recruitment experience, understanding the market, and speaking to client’s and acknowledging their needs. The other part is pure passion, problem-solving, creativity and last but not least, extensive understanding and knowledge in my experience incorporating Emotional Intelligence into the recruitment process. Anyone can write a CV, but who out there can understand how the person will react when they read the CV, how can I ensure the person reading it immediately judges with a lense and think this person has “high attention to detail”, “is organised”, “collected”, “smart”, and able to “communicate clearly”?

That takes experience, deep understanding and expert market knowledge to write a CV or resume in the language that gets you ahead of everyone else. I have used NLP in the past to write training content and incorporate into the leadership training programs. Neuro-Linguistic Programming is not for the faint-hearted. But I have managed to harness a portion of it to suit the CV & resume process, aiming to unblock your potential in such a way that the reader is immediately stimulated through practical and effective use of powerful language.

So, what are we missing?

How can you present an instantly more collected and organised CV or resume, transformed achieving rather than a doing profile and an elegant layout that displays the information clearly and concisely? An easy on the eye and sharp content, leaving little distraction to the eye and great attention to detail?

The layout seems to play a huge role in the UAE, recruiters are looking for an elegant, clean and unobstructed layout focusing only on what we believe to be the most important focal point on the CV or resume, the content within your abilities and duties of past and current roles. Increasing your chances of being picked up by ATS software and recruiters that are looking for the content matching their job descriptions, allowing your profile to be mobile friendly as well.

Judgement, there was an article I read a few years ago that said recruiters take between 6-7 seconds to view the CV (this to me is absolutely shocking and absurd, how can you know whether someone is suitable withing that time frame?) but unfortunately, it seems to be the truth. So what do you need to do to make sure you maximise the 6-7 seconds? Focus on consistency with the font, font size, spacing and grammar, if you have spelling mistakes even with so many free spells checks out there, you should not have an excuse when it comes to spelling and grammar.

Finally, the singular most important aspect of the CV or resume is your ability, job duties or experience. I have read so many CV’s and resumes that are over 3 to 4 pages long with NO, I will say it again with NO details of the jobs they held, they have only written their Job Titles. Are you serious, we’re in a competitive market, and the only thing you say is that you were the Manager at a Company, totally shocked when I see that. Your ability to bullet point your role to a maximum 6-10 bullet points are going to be your challenge, we think everything is important. Truth be told, it is but an executive summary is not a place for everything, it’s a summary of your experience, brief and concise explanation that can resonate with recruiters.

So, what about the rest you ask Jessica, skills, training programs, certifications. If it is recent, it is relevant, I usually advise my clients to keep it brief, CIPD, CIA, ACA, HSE, ISO, and some I have not mentioned here, these type of certifications are an absolute yes due to its importance in today’s market. Everything else is for LinkedIn or can be kept until you are asked for it during an interview.

My main point I would like to leave you with is, that your CV or resume is a small reflection of what a company can expect from you, do you have high attention to detail, are you organised and collected. A CV or resume is a tiny bit of insight into what it will be like to work with you. So if you have a CV that represents you well enough you are already one step ahead on the negotiation scale when it comes to being called for an interview and negotiating salaries.

A well-written CV or resume gives you the confidence you need to put your best foot forward when sending your profile to a company you would like to work for. Who wouldn’t want to call you when your CV is looking top-notch? The rest is up to you.

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