The first thing to understand is that recruiters do not actually ‘read’ CVs. The precious document you’ve spent all weekend crafting into a masterpiece will most likely be given a 3 second review before the recruiter decides to keep you in process or eliminate you from the search. Don’t be offended or outraged about this – it is purely a consequence of the recruiter having to process hundreds of CV’s every day, often under unrealistic time constraints. What is actually being done is perhaps better described as ’scanning’ – a one blink glance for key elements within a document that determine whether you are to called or deleted. As a Job Seeker, your first task is to pass this CV scan – here are a five tips on what you’ve got to do.

1. Be Easily Contactable
That means mobile and email on the top of the first page. Putting this information anywhere else forces the recruiter to hunt for it within the document, and every additional second he spends doing this exercise increases the risk that he will give up and move on to the next CV on his list.

2. Be Conventional
Unless you are in a creative industry, its worth avoiding any kind of unnecessary formatting or design that could be considered gimmicky. That means backgrounds other than white, font colours other than black, any kind of non standard font, unconventional bullet points and so on. There is a difference between making your CV stand out, and making it look wierd. Unconventional formatting does the latter and will almost certainly lead to the delete pile.

3. Be Categorical
Of course, you are a multi talented, multi dimensional professional, but to pass the CV scan you need to be easily categorised into a role a recruiter understands. Strange as it may sound, but you need to pigeon-hole yourself on the CV. If you are a Project Manager, the recruiter needs to understand this in 3 seconds of opening your CV, so make it obvious with your headings, the language you use and skills you list.

4. Be Easy On The Eye
Bullet points were invented for a reason – use them. Writing blocks of text forces the recruiter to actually read – remember that’s not what that’s not what he wants to do. It’s time consuming to pick out those key elements within a block of text more than 5-6 lines long. Make a clear, related points within short paragraphs (try for 3-4 lines) and follow up with subheadings and bullets if you need to expand upon it.

5. Be brief
A recruiter can tell how long your CV is as soon as the document is open. Keep your CV to two pages if you can, four pages at an absolute maximum. Anything over that and the recruiter will close it down before they even begin to read.

There is a somewhat unpalatable rule of thumb in all of this; don’t make the recruiter work. Your best interests are served if you make as easy as possible for the recruiter to understand your CV and do so in 3 seconds or less.

Consider these five steps a sanity check on your CV – do you need to change it?

Recruitment Agents. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, if you’re currently in the job search, the chances are you are currently dealing with one of them. Don’t they have an inordinate amount of influence on the success or failure of your job search? It would probably be an idea to know a little bit about their thought process and the types of behaviour. Here are five easy to follow tips on how to rise to the top of a recruiters shortlist.

1. Be available

When your phone rings, answer it. In a hyper competitive labour market, you will lose opportunities by being difficult to contact. Its understandable you can’t always talk at work and its difficult when your boss is sitting on the desk right behind you. Nevertheless that means little to recruiter trying to build a pipeline. From his point of view, he’s got a list of 30 people to call – he needs only 5 to be able to say he’s got a shortlist. You don’t answer and he’s simply going to go, ‘next’. Don’t let it get that way – if you’re serious about job hunting, answering your phone is worth the risk and has to be your number one priority.

2. Be honest

This is fighting fire with water. Yes, recruiters do have a reputation for being ‘economical with the truth’, but you know what? So does anyone who is trying to sell you something. That doesn’t mean that adopting their ways is necessarily in your best interests. Indeed, sometimes, the recruiter simply needs answers to closed questions (are you looking for a job y/n? would you relocate for the right opportunity y/n? are you interested in working in this or that industry y/n?). Being disengenuous to these questions will simply generate options that are not right for you. Recognise that certain questions are not there to test you – they are there to qualify your suitability for the post he has in mind. More importantly, an honest answer will save your most valuable resource in the job search – your time.

3. Know what you want

There is nothing more irritating to a recruiter than a candidate whose prepared to be an everyman. Agents recruit to a spec – a set of instructions from a client detailing the targeted candidates background, skillset and personality. Candidate qualification is often no more than a box ticking exercise. The ‘I’ll do anything/everything’ approach smacks of desperation and ticks none of those boxes and will lead straight to the ‘delete’ pile. Be clear on who you are, what you can do and what you want to do – that’s all.

4. Do as you say

If you agree on a topic or make an arrangement, then stick to it. This may be considered a minimum professional responsibility in any circumstance, but it is especially important when your career prospects are on the line. If you agree to be available for a phone call, make sure you are. If you agree to meet the agent, be there 15 minutes beforehand. And if you agree to interview with a client, please make sure you go!

5. Get that job

Goes without saying, but the best way to be considered a top candidate by a recruiter is if you have successfully secured a job through that agent before. You’ve just earned him some commission and he has just secured the job for you – quid pro quo. Once this relationship is established you have a great chance to develop a real professional relationship of mutual benefit; he knows you’re quality goods and you know he can secure you gigs – don’t let that relationship slide, even if you are not planning on looking for work anytime soon.

I’m sure you’ve seen enough predictions for the New Year, but I am going to sneak this in before the year truly gets underway with the first day of work. Here are 7 trends in recruitment & social media I think we are going to see in 2010.

1. Return of Recruitment, as the numbers of unemployed continue to rise
We are going to see more vacancies released and jobs advertised as managers look to restore equilibrium to their organisations damaged through the job cuts and recruitment freezes of the past 18 months. Recruitment agencies – newly streamlined in 2010 – will stage a mini recovery in Q1 and Q2. This will be in spite of rising unemployment, which according to the widely cited CIPD report of December 21 will peak at 2.8 million later in the year. What does this mean? Simply, that the jobs being created are going to be different from the ones being lost. Industries on the growth track include green tech, IT, social media & HR. Those continuing on the downturn include middle office, administration, old media, & soon, public sector.

2. The Rise & Rise of Flexible Working
Organisations will become increasingly innovative in the use of different types of employment contracts they offer as they aim to source labour on an ‘on demand’ basis. Expect to see this reflected in increasing numbers of interim, contract, fixed term, part time and flexi working vacancies – at the expense of the traditional permanent job market. This will have implications on job search strategy – more people are going to be working for shorter periods of time with more employers, possibly holding down multiple assignments with different employers simultaneously. Job applicants will learn the skills more typical of freelancers to compete in a complicated job market.

3. The Year of the Home Based Entrepreneur
Changing working patterns will present an unprecedented opportunity for a segment of the labour market long neglected – the stay-at-home. Social media becomes a true enabler of homebased working, initially as employees and increasingly, as entrepreneurs. Expect to see an explosion of entrepreneurial start ups spearheaded by individuals who no longer need to choose directly between work and home. The ‘mommy blogger’ phenomenon will hit the UK, as the nature of flexible work gives home based workers a competitive advantage against those still locked in the 9-5 regimen.

4. LinkedIn continues its dominance
LinkedIn will go from strength to strength. Breaking the 50 million user barrier in late 2009 has created an unstoppable momemtum for the professional networking platform and it is now entrenched in the mainstream as an online resource, networking & career management tool. Those with dormant accounts will reactivate them; those who have not signed up already will do so. Everyone who is serious about the jobsearch will be on board by the end of year.

5. Twitter will plateau
What you say? Yes, indeed. The story of 2009 will NOT be the story of 2010. There are tose who do not ‘get’ Twitter; now they may not need to do so, particularly as Facebook continues its real time challenge through implementation of FriendFeeder and Twitter-like services. Social media overload will prevent the platform from extending its reach to new users and the initiated will end up preaching to themselves. Twitter will continue to thrive, but its increasingly expert user community will further distance themselves from the rest through further innovation of platform, clients and 3rd party integration further raising the barrier for new user entry.

6. Personal Branding will become cliche
Already prevalent in US career management circles, ‘personal branding’ will become the job search cliche in 2010; the use of marketing concepts and terminology to the job search will become common place – reiterated ad nauseam by recruiters, career coaches and employment consultants. There’s merit to it too, as traditional job search techniques (reliance on job boards, agencies & adverts) increasingly give ground to new/old job search techniques (networking, social media promotion, direct application). Establishing and managing your personal brand will rank alongside writing your CV and polishing your interviewing skills in terms of importance to the job search

7. Social Media & Business
Businesses will bite the bullet and embrace social media, with widely variable degrees of success. Expect an explosion of company Twitter profiles, LinkedIn Groups & Facebook Fan Pages. However dormant most of these will end up being they will nevertheless be in place as companies make the effort not to be seen as behind the times. Some organisations will learn to use these platforms to communicate vacancies; individuals in turn will learn to use company profiles as places to go to find employment opportunities. Companies who have denial of service policies on social media platforms will relent as mobile devices render such policies redundant. Social media governance guidelines will follow by default & every company will have a policy in place by the end of the year.

Thats my 7, lets see how it turns out in 12 months time. Great to be back – best wishes for 2010.

LinkedIn. Social media for grown-ups, the job seekers best friend and the end of the road for the Curriculum Vitae as we know it. Following Dan Schawbel’s excellent piece Predict the End of the Traditional Resume Here in Personal Branding Blog last week, here are 5 more reasons why LinkedIn will prove to be the ultimate CV killer.

1. DATA CURRENCY
CV’s get out of date, fast. As a static file it does a passable job of capturing a snapshot of your achievements, but it begins running out of currency the moment it leaves the safe confines of your desktop. You click send, it instantly becomes a historical document; the longer it’s out there, the more remote it becomes to your reality and the less relevance it has to you and your job search. Legacy CV’s – documents you sent several job searches ago – can sit on recruiter databases and online job boards for years after your original submission. These documents are so far out of date, they constitute misinformation on your professional status and are a significant threat to the message you are communicating to the employer market, never mind the negative connotation it delivers to your personal brand.

HOW DOES LINKEDIN CHANGE THINGS?
Like all social networking sites, LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to amend your profile any time you are log into your account. Got a new qualification? Add it to the Education section. Got a new job? Simply Add A New Position. Looking for a job? Update your status to that effect. There are no files to upload, no documents to rewrite, no rogue files to chase down and delete. LinkedIn can be as near to a real time depiction of your current professional status as you need it to be, removing the need for anyone to ask the first question of any recruitment process – ‘are you looking for work?’

2. DATA ACCURACY
CV’s are marketing documents and they typically contain….embellishments on the truth. Lets face it, when you need a job, you’ll do what it takes to get one and that often means telling people about the time when you were the James Bond of company X or business Y. The more subtle may prefer the technique of claiming credit for stuff you never did. Sure, you knocked out a few spreadsheets, and they looked really good but doesn’t mean that you delivered the £100 million business critical project, buddy. Some even go right ahead and tell outright lies – dates, job titles, employers, responsibilities or whatever else comes to mind. I should know. I’ve hired a few of those guys.

Why do people feel free to lie on the CV?

The temptation is there because there’s a good chance that you won’t be contradicted until after you’ve been offered the job. Due diligence in the recruitment process generally takes place after the fact – remember the ‘offer conditional upon satisfactory references’ line? As crazy as it sounds, this is how we do it – interview, offer, then check whether the guy is crazy or not. References were invented precisely because employers wanted a system to assure themselves that the Richard Branson they’ve just offered the job to is just precisely who he says he is. It’s just never been a very good system.

HOW DOES LINKEDIN CHANGE THINGS?
Of course, there is nothing stopping you from lying on your LinkedIn profile; however, it would be one of the most unwise and career limiting mistakes you could make. The information you put out there is public, it is open to challenge, and the people you are connected with are the very people who know you best – your work colleagues. Lying on LinkedIn affects them by their association with you and you’ll either see a mass departure of your soon-to-be ex connections or a complete lack of recommendations from the very people from whom you need it most. What’s more, the visibility of your connections allows a preliminary reference to be easily taken by any employer foolish enough to contemplate hiring you – without your knowledge or say so. Anybody still think this is a good idea?


3. DATA PRESENTATION
How many times do career coaches/advisors/your wife tell you to distinguish yourself from the hordes of CV sending maniacs by increasing your font size and inserting a few nice tables? And you know what? they do have a point – it is good to be different. Career expert Alison Doyle always gives great tips on CV writing. But being different brings its own set of problems, principally by making it a serious pain-in-the-ass for recruiters and hiring managers to compare candidates on a like-for-like basis. Having different looking CV’s means that recruiters are actually going to have to go to the trouble of reading them. This is why the application form was invented, basically an attempt to standardise the presentation of applicant data to increase human and computer efficiency. Some institutions like, anything to do with Her Majesty’s Government don’t actually accept job applications in any other way. But of course, every employer has a different application form, passing on the pain to the applicants who have to go through the rigmarole of completing different sets of forms for every single job they apply for – its difficult to think of a bigger waste of time for an already time stressed job seeker.

Why can’t there just be one standard template for presenting your professional experience….?

HOW DOES LINKEDIN CHANGE THINGS?
Regardless of the content you input or applications you add, the basic template for every one of LinkedIn 40 million plus users remains the same. Recruiters have long since become familiar with the information architecture of LinkedIn profiles and their ability to conduct comparative assessments has consequently become much more efficient. LinkedIn makes it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to make decisions – this is a good thing for everyone involved in the recruitment process, leading to quicker decisions, fewer dead ends and less time wasted.

4. DATA PROTECTION
We already know you lose control over your CV when you submit to somebody or somewhere else. What we haven’t talked about is how you’ve also lose control over the content within the document. Your carefully crafted two page masterpiece? Oh, you mean the one that’s about to be mangled by the incompatible technology stack of the job board you’ve sent it to? Or perhaps you mean the one that’s about to be deliberately altered by the recruiter who thinks its not quite fit for his particular purpose? If you think you have only have one version of your CV out there in cyberspace, then think again. If you’ve ever applied to an online advert, or uploaded one to a job board, the chances are you have many, many more.

HOW DOES LINKEDIN CHANGE THINGS?
LinkedIn is a network of password protected profiles, where the owner has sole authority to create, edit, manage and delete information on his or her account. It is not a file that can be doctored or reproduced, nor is there a requirement for it be compatible with this reader or that database. Furthermore, any duplicate accounts can be easily located and removed by the owner. The security of the data on a LinkedIn profile is one of the primary reasons why it is so popular as a recruiting tool – it serves as a method of validating information found on CV’s. It has become the single most authentic representation of an individuals professional experience; its only a natural extension of the logic to see it replace the CV entirely once we get comfortable with information that is managed this way.

5. DATA DISINTERMEDIATION
Data disinterwhat? Yeah, that’s right. Data disintermediation. Or cutting out the middle man if you prefer English to recruiterspeak. It is not a stretch to say that the flaws inherent within the CV is one the central reasons why recruitment agents – and filing cabinets – actually exist. As CV aggregators, the recruiters grew an industry to fulfill an essential service for job seekers and employers alike – storing and managing CV information. So long as the CV was currency of the job market, the recruiters had a real value added role to play, playing match maker between those who had the labour and those who held the vacancies.

HOW DOES LINKEDIN CHANGE THINGS?
LinkedIn has enabled job seekers and employers to reach each other directly, without the need for intermediaries or the documents they monopolise. Recruiters have lost control of the information on which the industry is based, not because they’ve lost control over CV’s, but because CV’s themselves have been superceded by another way of presenting records of professional achievement. The implication is obvious – if job seekers and employers find each other through the information they exchange on LinkedIn, the need to produce a document replicating much of that information will increasingly be seen as inane.

SO, IS THE CV REALLY DEAD?
Culture lags behind technology. And when cultural change comes, there is no reason to assume that it will uniform across all sectors of the society. Indeed if we review the inconsistent adoption of what we now accept as standard tools, we can anticipate variance we what we’ll find in different sectors of the economy. Only last year, I worked with one public sector client where staff still shared one PC in order to send emails – this in 2008. So the CV will be around for at least a while, certainly as a backup document ‘for the records’ (those filing cabinets again) but it will be increasingly marginalised in the recruitment process in favour of more efficient, more accurate and more authentic media. And as Gen Y enters the workforce in real numbers, the erosion of its value will continue, until one day – soon – employers will simply stop asking for them.