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Get Interview Ready With The 3 Rs

In recent weeks my colleagues have written articles looking at how to get the most from the job application process and how to stand out as a candidate. If you’ve successfully made it to the interview stage, how can you give yourself the best chance of now securing the job you’re hoping for?

Interview preparation can often be the deciding factor between two candidates with equally strong CVs – and sometimes it comes down to issues you may not have considered at all in the past. Today I want to run through all of the key advice I give to every candidate ahead of an interview, which I think of as the Three Rs.

1. Do Your Research.

Both of our recent candidate advice articles have touched on this, and it’s the first thing any recruiter will tell you – learn everything you can about the company, the role, the interviewer or panel. We all know that candidates asking questions in interviews is important but few things will undermine an interview performance like asking a question that your potential new employer thinks you really should already know the answer to.

Thorough research enables you to have an informed conversation with the interviewer, rather than asking them for basic facts you could easily have read elsewhere. Look at the company website and their pages on social media, find out what news they have recently issued and what company events they have coming up and work these into the conversation. If you only have the text of a job advert describing the role, ask if you can see a full job description. Check the LinkedIn profiles of your interviewers and have a look at their background and what route they’ve taken to their current role.

Having all of this information at your fingertips will allow you to ask more specific questions, and also just to hold a more memorable conversation during the interview – and being the most memorable candidate is often decisive.

2. And Your Revision.

It might sound silly to be asked to study up on your own CV – you’re the expert in what you’ve done! But, as discussed in our previous guide, you should be fully tailoring your CV for the specific job you’re applying for every time. That means you might have pulled out details that you’ve not thought about in years and highlighted knowledge and tasks from past roles that aren’t part of your current job.

It’s worth really learning your own CV back to front before going into an interview – this is all of the information that your prospective employer has about you, and you need to be ready for any questions they’ve formulated based on that document. It doesn’t look good if you’re asked about a detail from your resume and have a moment of confusion or need to be reminded.

3. Now, It’s Time to Rehearse.

Performing in interviews is a skill in itself – and one you can work on. A key factor that separates some of the truly great interviewees is a willingness to run through practice interviews and notice where they’re having difficulty or need to prepare extra information. Having a friend or partner run through a mock interview with you, using stock interview questions, can help you find current gaps in your preparation. Maybe you’ll realise that while you do have a good example of when you overcame a difficult work situation, you haven’t yet planned out a detailed STAR model answer for it.

If this is your first time encountering it – the STAR model is Situation, Task, Action, Result, and is a great way to organise anecdotal responses to make sure you include all of the necessary information.

I would also recommend rehearsing the practical side of the interview. So, if your meeting is taking place over video call, make sure you have a good set-up ready in your home with a tidy, clean background, good lighting and a stable internet connection. Have a friend join a Zoom or Skype call with you and feedback to you on how it looks from their side. This will also allow you to test your microphone and speakers and make sure ahead of time that your interview won’t be held up by the interviewers not being able to hear you, or needing to change headphones or microphones at the last minute. They can probably also be trusted to let you know if your planned interview outfit doesn’t look professional enough – which is a good reason to do this at least a few days before the actual call.

I also always tell candidates to have a back up plan in place and be ready to re-join fast – make sure the e-mail with the meeting link is readily available to you and that you can quickly switch to using your phone or a tablet if something goes catastrophically wrong with your primary device at the last minute or during the interview.

For in-person interviews, where possible I always recommend doing a practice run of your route to the office or meeting place in advance so you can be absolutely confident of when you’re going to arrive. Work out where you’re going to park or which exact public transport you’ll be using and time out a visit so that you are absolutely certain you’ll arrive 10-15 minutes before the scheduled time.

Once you’re in the room or on the call, all of that preparation will pay off. Thorough preparation helps combat nerves and should make it easier for you to be present, engaged and enthusiastic, with an answers quickly at your fingertips for any questions asked and array of interesting questions to ask your prospective employer.

Beyond the Interview

After harnessing the power of Three Rs, remember to take care of Post-Interview Admin. A quick e-mail to express your thanks to the interviewer or panel and to re-state your enthusiasm for the organisation and the job opportunity is a small thing that can make a big difference in which candidates are remembered positively.

If you’re working with a recruiter, like the team at Kind Consultancy, get in touch with them as soon as possible after the interview and share your feedback, asking them to pass along a positive message to the client, as well as any follow up questions you may have.

Thorough preparation is the differentiator that can ensure you get the job when you’re up against people with similar knowledge and experience. Investing the time and energy before an interview can make such a difference.

Another way to get an edge on other candidates is working with an excellent specialist recruiter – like Kind Consultancy.

Shai Cassidy

(This article originally appeared on LinkedIn, follow our Company Page there to see all of our news first)

Video Interviews: The Kind Guide

Even before we were all asked to work from home, conducting interviews on video calls has become more and more popular with many companies. Now, for the near future with almost all of us working from home and organisations discouraging office visits, it’s going to be the primary way interviews are conducted. Some people who are great at face-to-face interviews suddenly flounder when confronted with a screen – and others may have promising conversations compromised by a poorly thought through home office configuration. Read on for Kind Consultancy’s tips on giving yourself the best chance at impressing in your video interview:

  1. Initial Preparation

Find out as much as you can when you’re first invited to the video interview, especially about what platform or software they use – Zoom? Skype? Teams? Ask in advance and get prepared. Many of the most popular options provide tools for your potential employer to host a meeting without you needing to log in, but just in case it’s a good idea to create an account on their chosen platform ahead of time. This will also allow you to run a test call through it, so you can see if your webcam and microphone are set up correctly.

  1. Your Set-Up

Before the big call, run a practice call with a friend the day before, with your computer set up and placed exactly as it will be for the interview. Have a look at how you appear, check how it sounds. If your laptop is low down and the camera is pointing up at you, it’s harder to maintain a normal level of eye contact – and is just plain unflattering. Consider mounting it on a pile of books or a box so that the web camera is at your eye level when you’re sat up straight. Use headphones to avoid getting feedback from the audio coming out of your laptop – consider using a pair with a built-in microphone to get a richer, crisper tone on your voice as built-in laptop microphones can sometimes sound thin and tinny. Pick an area of your home with good lighting that gives you an uncluttered background – again, the test call with a friend is a great time to find out where the best spot is to be in for your interview.

  1. Dressing for Camera

You should dress for the video interview as you would if you were going in to interview in your prospective employer’s office – so it’s worth finding out ahead of time if they’re a casual office, a smart-casual office or are expecting a full suit and tie. There is an extra layer to think about here though, which is how certain colours work with webcams. Too much bright white, too much black or any very bright colours will all cause your camera to automatically adjust how it shows you and this can lead to your face being washed out or dimmed. If possible, wear your planned interview outfit for the test call so your friend can tell you if what you’re wearing is having any of these effects.

  1. Good Practice

If you’ve not spent much time on video calls before, it can help to run a few ahead of the interview to adjust to the medium. Some people can be a little stiff and awkward if they’re not used to being on camera and you definitely don’t want to find out you’re one of those people in the actual interview. Treat it as a normal face-to-face conversation as far as possible, maintaining a regular amount of eye contact (remember that this means looking toward the camera, not the video of the other person) and gesticulation, waving hello and goodbye – try to avoid being a very still talking head.

  1. In Case of Intrusions

We’ve all seen the viral video of the man being interviewed in his home office only to be dramatically interrupted by his stomping child – and you’ve probably had team calls in the last few weeks featuring some unexpected guest appearances from your colleague’s pets. If this does happen during your interview, quickly mute your microphone (if you’re new to the software, find out how to do this during your practice calls), remove the intrusion, unmute, apologise briefly and get right back to what you were saying. Apologising too much will do more damage to the flow of conversation and your interviewer will hopefully understand that these things naturally happen when people are working from home.

And for everything else, see our guide to interview excellence – almost all of what you know about having a good interview experience still applies, and if you also consider the five points above you can make the most of the situation and give yourself the best chance of securing your next role via video.

If you’re not on the hunt for a job, but trying to adjust to carrying out your current one from home, we have some tips on how to make your time working from home a success.

Career Corner: The Pros and Cons of Contracting

You’re a Governance, Risk & Compliance professional. You’ve developed a portfolio of skills and gained an excellent bank of knowledge about your chosen niche and you’ve been working hard the area of the industry you’re really interested in. You’ve been in your current role for some time now, and you know you’re great at it but you’re starting to wonder where to take your career next. A question we get asked a lot by people in your position is:

Should I be contracting?

There are a lot of factors to consider before making this decision. Many people are attracted to the idea of contracting because they think they’ll make more money. There are cases where going from a permanent role to a contract at a similar level will see an uplift in how much you’re taking home, but the idea that contracting is always going to make you more money is a sweeping generalisation. Especially if you’d be leaving a permanent position, you should carefully consider the financial reality of contract opportunities on a case-by-case basis, and weigh that carefully against a number of other factors. Just as changing jobs is almost never purely about salary (read our blog on deciding if it’s time to look for a new opportunity), it would be unwise to make the decision to begin contracting based on just the numbers. Especially with the current changes around IR35 and how many employers are handling that, it’s not as straightforward as you may have been led to believe.

This is why the non-financial aspects are so important here, for example; contracting allows you to take on a greater variety of challenges, getting to grips with the specifics of a different situation and context with each new role you take on, even within your specialism. If you already enjoy varied work in your permanent position, take that into account, but if your role feels constraining and even monotonous, moving to contract work could be the solution.

This gets to the heart of the issue – you need to find out what kind of work suits you best, there is no one-size-fits-all solution on this. Where some people are most professionally satisfied hopping around the country, diving into a new team every six months, others are going to much prefer a secure long-term position where they can grow and collaborate with the same trusted colleagues.

The first question you need to ask yourself is what do I like about my current role and what do I dislike about it? Would temporary and interim work provide more or less of what you personally find fulfilling? Maybe try to discuss this with friends or contacts who have contracted in your field. Cover all of the angles before making a commitment to a significant change to your career and lifestyle. It’s not right for everybody, but if it is right for you it can be immensely rewarding.

Career Corner: Time to Leave My Job?

Is it time to leave my job? It’s a good question. In these guides, we’ve focused on various aspects of how best to conduct yourself across the process of applying and interviewing for a new job. But how do you know when it’s time to set out on that journey? A lot of people face frustrations in their jobs, and no workplace is perfect, but what are the signs that you should start looking for a new position elsewhere?

Sometimes a situation is clearly not working. If you work with un-cooperative colleagues and managers who you don’t get on with, there’s really no other option than to get out of that toxic work environment and leave your job. One person can’t change an entire office’s culture, and if you notice you’re spending a lot of time outside of work venting to friends and family about your co-workers, it’s time to get new ones.

For many people, the key thing that incites them to want to leave their job is being repeatedly passed over for promotions or denied pay rises. Initially, this might seem like something that can be addressed within your current role – if you make a clear case to your manager about why you deserve the progression or the increase in pay, highlighting how long you’ve been in the role and what you’ve achieved, you may finally be able to get a step up from your starting level. But a management team that isn’t prioritising your career progression and doesn’t value your contributions isn’t going to suddenly change how they approach their staff, and you may find yourself once again stagnating for a long time without moving up the ladder. It’s worth thinking about looking for an organisation that invests more in its staff. You should also other forms of professional investment that aren’t purely monetary too – is your current job supporting you in getting new professional qualifications, attending industry events and expanding your knowledge and skills? Despite the big changes in Governance, Risk and Compliance over the last 20 years, there are still businesses that see it as a box-ticking exercise of no great value – and if you’re in an organisation that treats you that way, it might be time to move on.

Some things are not so obvious. If you’re in a job that you’re good at, it’s easy to end up coasting without realising it. When was the last time you faced a new type of problem at work? When did you last have to think creatively to tackle a task? If you’re struggling for an answer, then it might be time to think about getting into a role where you’ll be challenged more. Most of us are much happier in a role where we’re frequently expanding and pushing our skills, instead of being bored and operating on autopilot.

Many small issues in your job can be solved with open communication and making reasonable requests to the right people – but you also need to recognise when your workplace is no longer working for you. That’s when it’s time to leave – although we always recommend securing your next position before you hand in that notice.

If you’ve made the decision, read our Career Corner on how to resign the right way for some hints and tips on making the process as smooth as possible.

Are you considering leaving a permanent role to begin contracting? We took a look at the pros and cons you should consider in another Career Corner entry.

Career Corner: Resigning the Right Way

So, you’ve decided it’s time to move on to your next challenge. Every time you leave one company to join another, there’s one unavoidable, potentially unpleasant pressure point on that journey – resigning. How can you let your employer know you’re on the way out with the minimum of stress and drama?

Even if you’ve had a negative experience with your current employer, it’s important to try to part on good terms. Tempting as it may be to air out your grievances, there are numerous reasons to maintain a good relationship with a past employer. First, on a practical front, you don’t want to do anything that might create an issue when the company you’re moving to reaches out for a reference. It’s become a very commonly held belief that a company cannot give a negative reference and while it is rare, it’s possible. Secondly, if you have a contractually obligated notice to serve, you’ll want to do everything you can to maintain a positive, amicable atmosphere between you and the rest of the business for those weeks or months of service. Also if there’s any chance to negotiate a shorter notice, this is much more likely if you’re careful and cordial with your approach.

So how do you resign right? Pick your time carefully. Don’t announce it to other people in the office before you take it to management, it’s likely to be disruptive and may engender an unpleasant atmosphere across your team. Try not to hand in your notice in the middle of an important project that you’re vital to, or if someone else who works in your team has just left. Pick a quieter time, and arrange a meeting with your manager before you formally hand your notice in. Tell them that you’re planning to leave and that you’re preparing to hand in your notice but that you wanted to give them as much advance warning as possible. This gives them time to consider beginning to recruit for a replacement or training someone in the organisation up to step into your role. It’s considerate and should help to show that you don’t have any ill will towards the company and want to make the transition as smooth as possible, which will play in your favour if you are looking to negotiate on your notice period.

You may, at this point, receive a counter-offer, if the company really wants to keep you on – read our guide on how to handle Counter-Offers for in-depth advice on dealing with this.

After you’ve discussed your plan, put together your actual resignation letter – keep it professional, clear and concise. Outside of the facts of the situation, consider thanking your boss for your time there and what you’ve learned in the position, but keep it to one or two sentences. Once you do formally turn it in, emphasises that you’re happy to help make the transition as smooth as possible, whether that’s helping to recruit your successor, gradually transferring responsibilities to colleagues and helping teach them anything they need to know to cover for your position if there’s a gap between your exit and the projected time they’ll have someone else in your position. It’s important to keep up a positive attitude and a good work ethic during this time, otherwise, the final impression you leave with people may be spoiled.

Resigning is never easy, but by keeping the process as honest and pleasant as possible, you’ll avoid sabotaging yourself later on, and hopefully will be able to maintain good working relationships with people who can continue to be an important part of your professional network.

Still deciding whether or not it’s a good time to leave your current job? We have some tips on how to know if it’s time to go.

Career Corner: The Benefits of a Business Mentor

You’ve invested in your career within Governance, Risk & Compliance. Maybe you’re in your second or third position within your specialism and you’ve built up a good bank of technical skills and knowledge, but you’re not sure where to go next. This is the ideal time to find a Business Mentor.

Not to be confused with a coach or a consultant, a Business Mentor is someone who works with a mentee on their personal development, utilising their lived experience, industry expertise and professional network to aid the mentee’s career. A good mentor will help you to fully develop to the maximum potential within your current role and set you up for your next move up the career ladder. Your mentor will be the first person you go to when you need to discuss a difficult decision facing you in the workplace – whether they’ve been in a similar situation earlier in their career and can tell you how the choice they made played out, or if they simply act as a confidential sounding board, having that resource immediately makes those daunting fork-in-the-road moments in your job easier to navigate.

Every industry has its own unwritten rules and accepted ways of doing things, and a Mentor with good knowledge of Governance, Risk & Compliance and the wider worlds of Financial Services & Banking will be an invaluable resource in navigating the business. If you have an issue involving your direct superior, or staff in your business who are more senior than you, or perhaps a fundamental issue with the work environment, you can take that problem to an experienced Mentor to get an informed second perspective on the problem and how to approach it, before you initiate a difficult meeting in the office.

Now that you understand just a few of the benefits of a Business Mentor, you need to find the right one for you. Attending industry events and building your network is the best starting point here – even if someone isn’t in a position to be your dedicated mentor, there will be things you can learn from every GRC professional who you meet. Look out on LinkedIn for dedicated networking events in your city but also relevant conferences or one-off talks and speeches on Governance, Risk and Compliance topics. If you already have a person in mind, someone in your field who you admire, reach out to them via e-mail or social media – it may well be that they don’t have the time to take on a one on one mentee but they might be able to direct you to one of their peers who can.

However it is you find this person, you should try to get to know them a little, make sure you have compatible ideas and communication styles and are a good fit before you put the word “mentor” out there and propose regular meetings or similar. It helps to have a clear idea of what career goals you’re looking to achieve, and to put these goals to your mentor with a timeframe – it’s much easier to advise somebody on specifics than to just say you want to “be better” at your job or “advance your career” in vague terms.

There’s a tendency to view successful people in business as “self-made” but in reality, almost nobody reaches great success without the help and advice of others, and finding a trusted Business Mentor within your industry is a great way to make sure you have someone you can rely on in your corner.

Career Corner: Your Social Media and Your Job Search

Technology moves fast. Ten years ago you wouldn’t have had to think too much about your internet presence during a job search. Now, it can be the first thing your potential new boss looks up after seeing your CV. Don’t worry though, you can easily minimise risks and even use your social media presence to your advantage as a job seeker.

The big one, and perhaps the most obvious – try to avoid embarrassing yourself with your online presence. If you have social media profiles under your real name that contain any content that an employer might find objectionable or concerning, consider completely removing those posts and photos and/or locking your account. Be wary of any potentially controversial opinions you’ve expressed, any incriminating photos, and the most important one: any tweets or statuses complaining about your current or previous employer. Polls have found that this is the thing most employers have said they don’t want to see on candidates profiles.

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all provide privacy settings that can hide the contents of your profile from anyone searching for you while still allowing your pre-existing followers to see it. If you’re unsure about what could be off-putting to a potential employer, err on the side of locking accounts and switching to a professional LinkedIn-style profile photo. If your new workplace turns out to be a relaxed environment where no one will take issue with your political views or party photos, you can always unlock later.

If you do have open, public accounts under your real name, it can help a lot to post about and link to industry news. If you have the free time and technical knowledge for it, writing your own blog posts or LinkedIn articles relating to both your role and wider Governance, Risk & Compliance topics will help you stand out from other candidates, and show that you’re engaged and passionate about your career and your area of expertise.

With social media checks now being standard practice for more and more hiring managers, it can make a big difference for relevant, professional content to be the first thing that comes up when someone searches for your name. Making sure that your online footprint is flattering can give you a key advantage and stop you from being screened out early in the recruitment process.

At the start of your job search? Read our guide to building a better CV and preparing for interviews.

Career Corner: Achieving Interview Excellence

Being the right candidate for a job is about a number of factors. You need to have the right experience, built up across a career in relevant positions. You need to have developed the skills, honing your abilities and expanding your knowledge. You can have the perfect CV (read our guide on building a better CV right here) but you also need to demonstrate a crucial skill which is helpful for any job you’re applying for: interviewing well. How can you make sure you stand out from other applicants?

It starts with the preparation. Do your research. First, on the company. Don’t just glance over the basic facts, dig deep, learn everything you can online about the history of the company, their current market position, their subsidiaries or their parent company. Social media has opened up new paths here for job seekers – you can have a look at what kind of interactions the business has on their LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Facebook accounts to get a sense of their culture before you even walk into the office.  You won’t necessarily need to reference all or even very much of this in the interview, but it can inform your approach and what questions you ask of the interviewer. A really good interview should feel more like a free-flowing conversation, and thorough preparation can separate you from candidates who ask stilted, obvious questions. Second, ridiculous as it may sound, research yourself. Make sure you are thoroughly familiar with everything you mention on your CV, so you’re ready to discuss any aspect of it in further detail without having to look back at the document. If the interviewer has asked for your Linkedin, again, read closely over the information you’ve put on your profile before you head into the meeting – and have a quick read of our guide to managing your social media presence during your job search.

Next, consider punctuality and timing. Obviously not being late is critical, but there are other factors to take into account here. We always recommend that when possible candidates do a practice journey to the interview location ahead of the actual date so they have a good idea of how long it will take them to get there in real-world terms. Travel at a time that allows plenty of room for error – late and cancelled trains can throw off your arrival by a significant margin. Aim to arrive 10-15 minutes before your interview time; any earlier and you may seem disorganised or as if you’ve taken down the interview details wrong.

Once you’re in the interview, try to maintain a conversational rhythm while maintaining a confident, professional demeanour. Make sure you’ve got STAR examples rehearsed and ready to go – almost all interviews for Governance, Risk and Compliance roles at the moment will involve at least some competency-based questions. These are questions in the style of “Describe a time when you led or worked in a team”, “Tell me about a time where you made a difficult decision” or “Give an example of an example of a time you’ve solved a problem at work”. If you’re not prepared, the open-ended nature of these questions can leave you fumbling for minutes as you try to recall and structure a relevant memory, so, be ready. Look up examples of popular competency-based questions ahead of the interview and come up with STAR answers for them – Situation, Task, Action, Result. Most popular competency-based questions are variations on just a few themes; leadership, teamwork, problem-solving and time management, so we recommend preparing answers on all of those potential topics.

Remember that the interview may be your only chance to impress your potential new employer face to face – if you feel that you haven’t demonstrated all of your relevant qualities as your time draws to a close, don’t be afraid to ask if they have any reservations about you as a candidate. This shows confidence and will allow you to directly address any perceived gaps in your CV.

Finally, end on the right note. Re-state that you’re really interested in the position, that you would love the opportunity to join this company, that you’re looking forward to working together. Keep it warm and specific – let them know that, based on what you’ve learned in the interview, you are surer than ever that this is a good fit for you. Make sure to ask about what happens next in the recruitment process, but be tactful about how you phrase it -“What’s the next stage of the process?” shows you’re serious but “When will I find out if I’ve got it?” makes you sound entitled and aggressive.

Interviews can be nerve-wracking but remember that it should always be a two-way conversation about establishing if you are the right candidate for the job and if the job is right for you. If you feel like you’re being interrogated and facing a series of frosty silences when you try to open up the discussion, chances are that company culture isn’t going to be a good fit for you. Interviewing well is a skill just like any other and it takes practice to improve it, so treat every interview as an opportunity to work on your abilities.

Preparing for your first video interview? We’ve got some more tips on the specific things to think about before your call.

If it hasn’t gone to plan, read our tips on bouncing back from interview rejection.

Career Corner: Bouncing Back from Interview Rejection

The interview – the crucial turning point in any recruitment process that allows the potential employer and the potential employee to get a good sense of each other in person, asking any questions that haven’t been addressed, drawing out the wider story that exists beyond just a CV and a job description.

And sometimes, despite doing all the right preparation, things go wrong in the interview room. Everyone has off days. So what should you do if you’ve been interviewed for and subsequently rejected from a job that you know you’re qualified for? And how can you salvage the situation to make it a useful part of your career journey and not a sealed-off dead-end?

First, if you’re going to push back on an interview decision, you need to be able to concisely make a clear point about you being right for the job. Take the job ad or spec, take your CV, and make sure that there are no gaps in your experience, that you have the specific qualifications asked for, that you’ve previously demonstrated the requested skills. Compile all of that “proof” into one place – and be honest with yourself. If you review the job description and realise you are actually missing a key part of what they want, then you need to move on and make sure to develop that skill so you can add it to your resume before you next apply for a similar job.

Get in touch with the interviewer, or with your recruiter if they’re your point of contact – take as much detailed feedback as they’re able to give. If the door is firmly closed on the role, the most useful thing you can do is learn what went wrong. To that end, it helps to be very direct and ask for the key factors that prevented you from being advanced to the next stage of the process. If those turn out to be qualities that you do possess but didn’t get the chance to display during the interview, then explain as clearly and concisely how you have what they’re looking for, using solid examples from the information you’ve compiled.

It’s possible, in some cases, that your application will be reconsidered and showing you enthusiasm for this specific role can itself be decisive in changing the interviewer’s perception of you as a candidate.

During all these post-interview interactions, it’s vital to be polite and not come across as angry, bitter or demanding. The later stage of recruitment processes move fast and it may well be too late to be reconsidered for the exact role you interviewed for. While that does happen, what’s much more common is that a few months later a hiring manager will remember a passionate, friendly, well-qualified candidate who wasn’t quite right for that last role – but would be perfect for their new vacancy.

Every interview that doesn’t directly lead to you getting a new job can still be an important learning experience and an essential part of your career journey.

If you’re looking ahead to your next interview, have a read of our tips for achieving interview excellence.

Career Corner: Secrets to CV Success

Studies have suggested that recruiters and hiring managers will sometimes look at a CV for as little as six seconds before deciding if the candidate is worth keeping. So how can you make sure you clear the very first hurdle of the job application process? Here are a few tips to give yourself the best possible chance:

  1. Keep the format clean, consistent and easy to read. Over-designing your CV won’t do you any favours; it may seem like putting your experience into grids and expressing your skills as graphs would make your CV stand out but generally hiring managers are looking to see the most relevant information expressed in the most straight forward way.
  2. Edit your CV for each role you submit it to, approaching the application with a problem-solving mindset. A company posting a job is looking to solve a problem, not just fill a gap, so highlight and edit your experience to show how you can help with that problem. Cut down the descriptions of your less relevant roles, make it clear where and when you’ve gained the specific experience and skills they need while giving an overview of your wider career history. You’re only going to get a limited amount of time and attention, and it’s much better to give a detailed look at your recent and relevant roles than to present the hiring manager with in-depth breakdowns of everything you’ve ever done.
  3. It helps to get very specific about your past impact on the businesses you’ve worked for. Saying you’ve designed multiple Compliance procedures and policies is good – having concrete numbers that show your work reduced Compliance incidents is better. Quantify your achievements whenever possible – a bullet-pointed example with a number or statistic is often more effective than a block paragraph.
  4. If you’re including a link to your LinkedIn profile or a personal website, make sure the information on there matches your CV and is both up-to-date and informative.
  5. Keep it concise. Some people will tell you that a good CV must be no more than two pages but if you work in a complex technical field like Governance, Risk and Compliance, that can be an impossible target. It is however definitely a smart move to keep it as brief as possible with only the most relevant and impressive information. If you’ve worked in two or more roles within your chosen field, you don’t need to still be telling potential employers that you were a prefect at school. Similarly, with qualifications, keep it to ones that are relevant to the role. If you make every line count, you can keep the hiring manager reading even if you can’t contain your job history within two pages.

We talk a lot about making a good first impression at interviews but the real first impression you make as a candidate is the first time someone sees your CV. While we like to hope that the person with the best experience and most relevant skills will be the one to get the job, you can give yourself a better shot by fine-tuning your CV to make sure your application survives those crucial first six seconds.

Has your CV already secured you an interview? Read our guide on how to prepare for and succeed at this next stage.

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