Tips for Writing the Perfect CV

All organisations develop their own particular language and acronyms, but bear in mind that these may need explaining to an outsider. In fact, it might be better to avoid them altogether.

Now although you may not have enough organisational clout to determine what job title you go by in the workplace, it’s a different kettle of fish when it comes to your CV. For example, if the job titles you’ve had over the years don’t adequately convey what the jobs were about, feel free to adjust some of the content of your CV to make it more readily comprehensible to recruiters.

The language used in the workplace has always been tempered by historical practice and office politics. There was a story in the papers about four years ago concerning one of the main Whitehall departments that used to run a course called ‘Getting the Most Out of Your Junior Staff’. One of the juniors objected to the title and the course was consequently renamed ‘Succeeding with Teams’. The content, needless to say, was identical.

CONFUSING JOB TITLES

Now let’s be clear about one thing. I’m not advocating gratuitous inflation of the facts in order to make you seem like a bigger organisational hitter than you truly are. For example, it would be plain wrong to call yourself a Project Director when your most important contribution is to fetch everybody coffee. To describe yourself as a Director in those circumstances is to be the type of person that the Texans call all hat and no cattle.

On the other hand, what if your job title is something like Executive Officer (Finance Division)? I’d suggest that this title conveys relatively little about what you actually do. If the reality is that you orchestrate and control most of the company’s purchasing from outside suppliers, then calling yourself a Purchasing Manager on your CV is a reasonable translation of your responsibilities into language that would be more meaningful to somebody working in another company.

BIN THE ACRONYMS

 All companies have their own jargon and acronyms to describe various corporate activities. I was about half an hour into my first day with one employer when a work colleague told me to staple the RD17 to the B303 and then forward them both to PDU. Before long, of course, you learn the lingo and eventually you can even say sentences like that without laughing. The danger is that after a while this language becomes second nature to the extent that we pepper our CV with acronyms that would baffle the average reader and even require a recruitment consultant with a PhD in cryptography to pause for thought.

WHAT’S THAT IN ENGLISH?

I’ve noticed there’s a particular tendency for there to be a rush of linguistic blood to the head when companies come up with names for major change projects. In my time as a management consultant, I’ve come across change projects called Achieve, Xerxes, Lean Machine and Blue Sky. You rather wish that organisations would either go for something a little more descriptive of the project’s purpose (I’ve always thought that Slash ’n’ Burn would work for most organisations) or for a less macho name (wouldn’t you love to be put in charge of a change programme called ‘Could Be Worse’ or ‘Mustn’t Grumble’?).

Feel free not to use the project names that the company comes up with. It will probably make more sense to the reader of your CV if you describe their purpose, perhaps calling them something like ‘an organisation-wide change programme focused on cost reduction without job loss’ or ‘a major change programme designed to improve the company’s customer management systems’.

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