Top 7 Secrets to Impressing Employers
Getting a new job is sometimes tough when you’re going out of your way to get a role you’ve wanted for a long time, and it’s sometimes incredibly difficult to stand out from a crowd that all have extremely similar skill sets.
It all begins with your CV and this is the first impression you get from an applicant.
Ensuring you have a clear design that’s not too vibrant or fancy is somewhat important because the employer isn’t looking for someone with a colorful CV, but so one that is clear, concise, and straight to the point.
Learning and listing skills
This is a somewhat generic and obvious point, but there’s more to it than listing off your typing and empathy skills. You need a specific task, a reference to a time the skill was used, or a certificate of a specific skill learned via a reputable source.
For example, you can take various online courses on sites like Coursera and prove you’re caught up with the current events, sectors, and advancements.
If you’re in the tech field, catching up with recent innovations, particularly, by learning about the rise of cryptocurrencies is crucial, as it is a sector not many are knowledgeable of, so, it’s instantly impressive off the bat.
Start with basic cryptocurrency-related events and move into the blockchain technology – gaining awareness of the most important milestones will help you impress your employers in an instant.
Always keep it concise
Unless you are listing real applications of skills, you should always keep the document as clear as possible.
Employers aren’t offended at leaving jobs or roles out from over 5 years ago, as long as you’ve listed what achievements would have contributed to your suitability for the role itself with a small note to point out further details can be provided upon request.
Creating tables or having bulleted or numbered points is a great way of reducing the amount of content the recruiters have to look through.
You don’t need to worry about making a colorful impression just yet, this can be saved for the interview, and this way, you’ll have more content to bring up and more stories to tell that would demand their attention.
References
When it comes to references, these are a completely necessary part of the hiring process, and it is often policy to check at least one of the references listed.
A strong avoidance for this, however, would be to avoid putting quotes from previous managers and just allow them to be contacted directly, taking small snippets of quotes doesn’t provide the full picture, and freeing up space to ensure your CV is concise is vital.
Skills do not need to be rated
One of the most common mistakes when re-creating a CV is to list the work skills you have and then ruin this by grading your skills from one to five.
The only skill that you should be rating personally for is language, which can be officially measured by having a certificate or diploma. The hiring team will likely have a stage within the hiring process that can allow them to judge your skills via a test or task.
Skills should come with an example of use
To create a CV that would be universally liked by employers, you absolutely must ensure that the skills listed are submitted alongside a real-life working example of how you used it.
If you listed empathy as a skill, for example, tell the story of where you applied this most. It can be a time when you calmed a customer down, spoke with them for a prolonged period, and felt what they did.
You don’t need to have the perfect story, just the precise application of the skill in action. Always make sure to prepare this before and interview stage, so it’s ready to go, with minimal stuttering.
Always do your research
For any employer going through the hiring process, it’s incredibly rare to have a candidate that has done ample research on the company.
Small references that confirm you have done so are incredibly attractive for an employer, as they will more often than not refer to their story, the initiatives launched by the company, campaigns, and the list goes on.
They don’t expect a deep knowledge of everything the company has done, only that you’ve made an initial effort to learn about them.
Practice makes perfect
One thing that’s never really changed throughout time is the types of questions asked by employers, there are mounds of helpful tips and practice interview questions out there to ensure you can always provide not only an answer that makes sense but one that applies personally to you.
We’ve seen far too often how many of the ‘Strongest vs Weakest’ assets questions go wrong.
That’s certainly not an invitation to start listing off how bad you are at certain things, more like an invitation for you to show you’re willing to grow, learn from mistakes, and have a good eye for detail.
What people tend to get wrong is thinking about the content of your answers to questions, rather than a chance to show your ability to stop and assess.
