How To Create A Killer CV/Resume/Profile

We create and receive a lot of CV/Resumes/Profiles at interim.team so I guess we’re getting pretty good at judging what a great profile looks like, and what helps the author really stand out from the crowd.

Job boards, LinkedIn, interim.network, etc, can be a good source of jobs but they don’t filter very much (both ways) so how can you rise above the noise in people’s inboxes/feeds?

I’m going to apply a lot of what Amine Bellaoud talks out in his excellent article about neuromarketing here because at the end of the day creating and presenting a CV/Resume/Profile is Marketing.

Make The CV/Resume/Profile Look Err…Nice

Your CV/Resume/Profile is a marketing document so it needs to be well presented and look err…nice.

If you can’t be bothered to present yourself well in such an important document can you really be trusted to represent someone else’s team or company?

This is one of interim.team’s growth hacking profiles and this is one that isn’t.

What do you think? Which one looks more interesting and makes you want to read it?

The Use Of Photos

I know not everyone will agree but I think profiles should include photos.

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that a photo of a person’s face is the thing most likely to get our attention in a stream of information. It could be argued that the use of photos increases the potential for positive/negative discrimination though so I wouldn’t necessarily see it as a negative signal if someone chose not to include a photo.

Use Colour, Contrast and Differently Sized Content

The three factors of colour, orientation and size are additive in terms of getting our attention. (Nothdurft). More factors will grab more attention so ideally you should use all three in your profile.

Testimonials aka Recommendations aka Reviews

All the interim.team profiles include testimonials for very good reasons.

There is a lot of evidence to suggest that people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations so it is very important to present recommendations as early and often as you can.

It is pretty straightforward to ask your connections for recommendations on LinkedIn these days.

The Three Boxes Of Greatness (™)

At interim.team we review profiles against three main criteria of

• “Technical” Skills
• Impact Focus
• Team Player

Make sure you tick these boxes in your profile.

“Technical” Skills

“Technical” skills are the competencies you use to perform a role. If you’re a Developer they might me coding in a specific language, if you’re a Marketeer they might be paid for search, if you’re a scrum master they might include running daily stand ups or whatever. We have sections like “Expertise” in the interim.team profiles to highlight technical skills. You need to make sure you present evidence that you have the necessary tools in your tool box for the role but don’t overdo it…see Impact Focus below.

Impact Focus

It’s really important that you present as someone who wants to have an impact for a team/business that focuses on the “what” not the “how”. Yes it’s great that you know how to run Google PPC campaigns but what results did you achieve with them? What were the business results of what you did? We have “Delivery” sections in the interim.team profiles to highlight these achievements.

Being A Team Player

These days ticking the other two boxes but being what Netflix CEO Reed Hastings called a “brilliant jerk” will stop you getting hired by great companies. As he said: “Some companies tolerate them. For us, the cost to effective teamwork is too high.” We have sections like “Relationships” in the interim.team profiles so we can demonstrate that being a good team player is important to people in our network.

How long should the CV/Profile/Resume Be?

All the interim.team profiles are one page.

We never, ever present a profile that is longer than that.

Why? Because we need to show we can summarise the important information in a context and not just present a stream of un-curated facts. I guess two pages would be OK but I would argue any longer than that is counterproductive. Show that you have taken the time to write a short profile.

Which Format Should You Use?

Our profiles at interim.team are normally in Adobe PDF format. Nearly all platforms and devices can read a .pdf file these days. (Google can and does index .pdfs but it definitely prefers other formats like HTML if you are a creating a document specifically for search engines).

Make your CV/Resume/Profile look good, use testimonials, keep it short and tick the the Three Boxes Of Greatness…

If you create a CV/Resume/Profile that is interesting to look at, ticks the “Three Boxes Of Greatness”, is concise and informative you really maximise your chances of being selected for the next stage of the hiring process.

Good luck!

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