With research showing that a prospective employer will spend on average only 7 seconds looking at the suitability of your CV for a vacancy, the need to make your CV stand out from the crowd is of paramount importance. One of the key ways to do this is in your use of words.
You may have heard our recent podcast featuring 10 Top Tips for your CV or our blog post on Power verbs to use.
Today we concentrate on the use of Stand Out Words which employers look for.
Here are 5 key ones:
1. Flexibility
Flexibility is a favourite buzzword. The right candidate for an employer will be flexible, and so the company can be equally accommodating for its workers. So try and get in there somewhere that you're flexible in your approach.
2. Adaptable
Indicating to a prospective employer that you are adaptable to change is of paramount importance. Businesses move at a very fast pace, and roles are invariably quite interchangeable these days. As a result, versatility is a desired trait for employers, as being rigid or holding onto legacy ideas can imply that you've fallen behind in the modern world, so show this where you can and use the word adaptable.
3. Initiative
It's good to display that you can use your own initiative. No-one wants to employ someone only to have to micromanage every single job that is passed to them.
Employers want to know that prospective candidates can use their own initiative and will be able to hit the ground running with a role with little intervention. While training is obviously and important aspect of the onboarding process when joining a new company, a large degree of it will require self-direction which is an essential skill. Is good to prepare examples so you can answer some competency based questions and back this up in person at interview stage.
4. Attention to Detail
Mistakes happen, that's part of life, however, demonstrating a good attention to detail means you can minimize mistakes showing the prospective employer that you are a right first time kind of person. You should mention this quality in your CV, and it will also be naturally demonstrated with how you have written, designed and proof read your CV also. If you make mistakes
5. Self Motivation
This ties in quite well with using your own initiative. While team building and employee engagement are an important element of being able to motivate staff from an employer perspective, it's considered fundamentally important that that staff can display the ability to motivate themselves. Being self-motivated goes hand in hand with having one's own initiative as I've said, and it's the ability to work independently and efficiently. So this is really important to include too.
Other words which we recommend for your CV to 'stand out' include enthusiastic, independent, multi-tasker, strong worker.
Those are the type of things that when people are skimming your CV, which they're going to do initially to short... before they shortlist, are going to look for.
What Next?
Here at Lucy Walker Recruitment, we have been helping job seekers with their career journey for over 30 years.
Would you like our help? Call one of our experienced consultants in Leeds on 0113 367 280, send an email here or schedule a call using the link below
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