SPEAKER_00 0:10

Whether you're just starting out or have a long career check writer, the CV can be a really challenging document to get right. Well, don't worry, because today we have with us professional CV writer Carl Scott to clue on what should and shouldn't be in your CV for today's job market.

Chris 0:27

Welcome to the Gen XZ Exchange. I'm Chris Perkins, Gen X parent, now 50-something empty nester.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

And I'm Lily Perkins, Gen Z Career Explorer. We swap insights on career choices, work, and life in general.

Chris 0:42

So whether you're a Gen X parent trying to figure out midlife challenges.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Or a Gen Z young professional or student figuring out adulthood, you're in the right place.

Chris 0:51

So Lily, I remember helping you write your first C V, and we had to be a bit creative with your achievements while you were still at school. But it got you an interview which got you your first job, and I know you've kept it updated ever since. What would you say has been your biggest challenge with writing your CV?

SPEAKER_00 1:08

I think thankfully I've got a bit more experience than back then, because back then it was like I've got half a Duke of Edinburgh award and like half a math qualification. Give me a job, please. So that's helpful having more to build upon. But now the originality and trying to stand out and then also avoiding repetitive phrasing when I'm writing my CV would probably be the main things that I'm struggling with. So for you.

Chris 1:33

Well, I've got a 30-year career behind me now, so it can be tricky to condense that down. I've always thought a CV shouldn't be any more than two pages. So trying to keep that to two pages, and coming up with the achievement statements. I think sometimes I after I've left a job, I've thought, oh, I wish I had more information on what I did with this, what I did with that, and finding the evidence to put in an achievement statement. It's something I'm trying to keep on top of. But now we can get all our CV-related questions answered. We are joined by Carl Scott, who is the UK's only certified career storyteller and a certified professional resume writer and member of the British Association of CV writers. Carl's been a professional CV writer since 2017, when he was working for a recruitment and training company, where every year he authored over 500 CVs, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles for senior business leaders. He then joined Randstad RiceMart as one of our branding experts, where we're colleagues. And I have personally seen many, many rave reviews that he gets from our clients for the amazing CVs he writes for them. He also runs his own company, Your Career Story, where he works his magic creating bespoke CVs and helping people write the next chapter of their career. Carl, welcome to the Gen XZ Exchange.

SPEAKER_03 3:01

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I've enjoyed all of your episodes so far, and I'm a little bit starstruck to be here. So thanks for having me.

Chris 3:09

Well, very kind of you to say so. So it was more surprising is you've heard all the previous episodes and you agreed to come on this one.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

We've not scared someone off, so that's a win. Yay. So, Carl, I just wanted to start off by asking you what got you started and what it is you're doing just now.

SPEAKER_03 3:25

Yeah, the magic of uh small business got me started in CV writing. I was working for, as you said, a recruitment and training company, uh, and it was a small startup in Manchester City Center. And just for my own enjoyment, I mean I was running the customer service team. I was enjoying it, but I needed something for myself. So I did a part-time masters in English and American literature. One of the sales team caught wind of that and said, Can you write a CV? Because I'm gonna sell someone a CV in the next hour. Uh and then before I knew it, I was a CV writer and we had a team of CV writers and we were selling CVs as part of the as part of the package. So just one of those things. I like so many people that I kind of fell into and then ended up really enjoying.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Yeah, nice. What is it specifically you would say that you enjoy about writing CVs then?

SPEAKER_03 4:11

Always really liked when somebody wants to say something but they can't quite get it into writing. Um, I've always been that person who people text, say, Oh, I'm trying to do this thing, but I don't know how to put it across, or I've always been proofreading people's emails or text messages or whatever. Uh, and so CVs is just that, but on a big grand scale, we don't think of our CVs very often, right? So we come to them once every few years when we need them. And then there's a lot of blockers to writing your CV. There's a lot of stuff that gets in the way of it. It can be quite tricky to think about your career in a certain way. So I love being the person who knows enough about it to help somebody put themselves down on paper in a way that they're really happy with, I think.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Yeah, no, that's lovely. I feel like I'm getting ideas now because I'm also the friend that friends are sending essays to to proofread and things. So maybe this is like a glimpse into my future as well.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

That's what I like to hear.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

Yeah, it's a good person to be.

Chris 5:03

Could be a future career move.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

I know, that's what I was thinking.

Chris 5:06

One of the things we see is it's a really difficult jobs market at the moment. What do you see as the current challenges around presenting yourself in a CV?

SPEAKER_03 5:15

I think there are some challenges that have always been there, which is it's really difficult to write about your entire lived experience in a way that is clear and succinct and understandable to someone else. There are a lot of kind of unspoken rules or tips and tricks, and it can be really difficult to understand all of them and bring them all together into a CV. That's stuff that's always there. But like you say, it is a really challenging and competitive job market at the minute. We're seeing widespread adoption of AI. We're seeing um it's so many applications going in for every single job just because economically things are tough. Um, and so there's a lot of competition and there are a lot of tools in the hands of absolutely everyone to sound pretty good. So standing out becomes extra difficult. So there's a lot of factors at the moment on top of all the stuff that's already there for all of us when it's when it comes to writing a C V anyway.

Chris 6:11

There certainly is.

SPEAKER_00 6:12

It's interesting that you bring up AI there because that's one of the kind of elements of the dreaded CV black hole that we're going into here. So if you're like me and you've just had Saturday jobs or maybe part-time jobs at uni and now want to focus on a proper career type shift, what's your advice for how to build the best CV you can to start off with?

SPEAKER_03 6:33

I guess there's a couple of aspects to that. And and one is maybe something that's not so much about the CV, which is gaining some relevant experience, right? There are coaches who help with this kind of thing. University career services can sometimes be quite good, um, especially since they are kind of motivated to help graduates of that university into careers, so they might have connections in the community or they might have things that they can kind of hook you up with. Um, so gaining some relevant experience for the CV is always a part of it. For me, though, uh my job as a CV writer is to take what you've got and make it sound as good as possible and to make it as well suited for the role as possible. And I think from my point of view, anyone who says to me they don't have any relevant experience, they maybe haven't asked themselves the right questions. And that's the thing that I'm there to help with, right? I think the questions that you really want to be asking are why do I want to do these jobs that I'm applying for? And why do I think I can do the jobs that I'm applying for? The answers to those are likely not because I've done the job before and have extensive experience in it, because that's the thing that you're worried that you won't be able to put in the CV. They're much more likely to be, well, I like this sort of thing, or I saw this line in the job description that made me think actually, maybe I'm well suited to that. I think that's the stuff that holds the magic in a graduate CV a little bit more than maybe, you know, just having done the job before or having achievements that line up perfectly with it. So I think motivation and passion and um enthusiasm about it can be a really big part of it. At the same time as that, you might not have all of that motivation and passion. You might be just looking at it because it's a graduate career. Um and I think if that is the case, then it's really important to think about building kind of from the ground up. So starting out at entry level, what are they assessing for? They're probably not assessing for somebody who knows how to do it already. They're assessing for somebody with the aptitude to do it, the skills to do it. And so getting those things in is maybe more important than matching every single line of the job description in your experience today.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

That's really helpful. In that same kind of vein, what you were saying about maybe they're not asking themselves the right questions. I wanted to ask you how much other stuff might be useful to include things that you wouldn't maybe initially think are relevant, but things like clubs, societies, hobbies, interests, stuff like that. Is there a way that we can kind of amp up descriptions about them, things we learn to suit the role more clearly?

SPEAKER_03 9:07

It's a brilliant question because this is the sort of thing that comes up all the time is how much to include hobbies or interests. I think particularly in a graduate CV, that might be the bulk of the CV, right? That might be the thing that you're drawing on the most, especially if you've, I don't know, held a leadership role in a club or a society, or if you're applying to something that involves a lot of writing and you were writing for the student paper or anything like that, the extracurriculars can be really helpful if they're relevant. But they can also speak to you and what makes you different and what makes you interesting. So if you are, if you are someone who's fortunate enough to have lots of relevant experience and transferable skills and be able to map onto a job description quite clearly, then you probably don't need loads of hobbies and outside interests. Right. But for the rest of us who've, you know, been exploring our interests at university, that's what it's for after all. I think drawing on those things that you've enjoyed are a really key way to differentiate from other people because the main game here is not sending in the same CV as absolutely everyone else. Yeah. And I think if you've got clubs or societies or passions or interests, these are all differentiators to put across to the role.

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Okay, great. So it would be more about looking for things that can kind of fill the gaps, make you stand out from others. And then what do you do for the achievement statements if you've not been in the kind of job you're applying for as well?

SPEAKER_03 10:32

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is the this is one of the things that comes up most often for me, especially if you're career changing or if you're early in your career. Because I think when people come to me, they often say, Well, I haven't got any accomplishments, or I haven't got any achievements. And that's very rarely the case. If you've ever pursued an interest or done stuff you enjoy, you have got achievements. This is potentially where those hobbies and interests come in, especially if you've participated in universities and societies or kind of done stuff outside, part-time work, things like that. Accomplishments to be found everywhere. And I think the way to think about them is how did you know you'd done something good? Right? If that's in a part-time job, how did you know you'd had a good day at work, a good week at work, a good month at work? What was the what was the thing that gave you that feeling? It doesn't have to be a huge no, you know, you don't have to have sold one million dollars of gizmos that month or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

It might just be, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

Right. It might just be that you've had a good conversation with a customer or you've been recognized by a manager. Stuff like that can be really, really useful accomplishments that other people won't have. And that's that's the power of accomplishments is going back to how do you differentiate, nobody else has the same accomplishments as you. So looking back over how do you know you've done something good, I think is probably the best way.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

And that's a similar kind of thing that you were saying before, as like maybe you're just not asking yourself the right questions. So I think just moving on to my last question for this section would be how to tailor for each job. So when we're looking at applicants like graduates, I know people who have been spamming 500 different applications every single day. Is there a most efficient, most like helpful way that we could be tailoring to each job?

SPEAKER_03 12:22

There's two parts to tailoring for different jobs. So the first is keyword matching. Um, it's good to have a core expertise section on your CV or a key skills section where you can just pull words from a job description and put them into your CV. Yeah. But that helps with the kind of automated process of job search, means that the scanning systems they're using can see the words that they're looking for. But then there's a little bit more nuanced part to it, which is the kind of quick gut feel that you get. And that loops back to that question I asked earlier of why do you think you can do the job? Speaking to that match, and that's going to be different for everyone. So it's difficult to give clear-cut advice on here. But I think speaking to the thing that you think you can contribute, or the thing that you think you can do that maybe other people can't, or your angle on applying for the job, I think is the other aspect to tailoring. And that comes out in how you position your clubs, your societies, your hobbies, your part-time work experience, all of that stuff. Which aspects of those do you highlight to show that skill set that you're trying to get across? So keyword matching, but then a more nuanced thing of here's how I think I'll fit this role just on kind of instinct.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

But I would like to know then how what can people manage? How can we tell what it is that makes us stand out from other applicants? You know, being new to the job market, not really having, not being super cleared up on everything. How can we tell, oh, this is what makes me unique to employers, this is how I stand out? Because that's one thing that I think I would really struggle with on that front.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

You're absolutely right. I think the answer is actually to maybe think about it a little bit less rather than more. Okay. Um, by which I mean I think it's really easy to get wrapped up in what do they want or what do they want me to show in my CV? And of course, you know, that's important. That's the kind of thing that keeps people like me in business, right? But actually, often the really valuable stuff that I get from talking to people is just asking them about how they spend their time, what they enjoy, what is it that makes them excited about an idea or something they've studied or even the opportunity that they're looking at. I think there's often way, way, way more value in that than in the things that I think are quite obviously gaps or things where you think, oh, I'm not sure how I'm gonna portray myself in the right way for this. As an example of that, I just posted recently um a case study from someone that I worked with. They were so passionate when I spoke to them about the music industry and about um new releases. They were listening to an outrageous volume of new music every week. They had a podcast on the go about new music that was coming out. They were just one of those people who they talk to you and they light up so much that it brings you in. You're you're thinking, send me your playlists, please. Right.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

It's like contagious, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:11

Yeah. And just none of that was in their CV at all because they tried to form it as okay, what jobs have I done? You know, what are my part-time experience alongside my uni stuff, what modules have I studied? And it just wasn't getting across the essence of them and the thing that made them so exciting for those roles they wanted in the music industry.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

It's a bit like clinical almost instead of being a bit more yeah, so lean into being a bit more personal.

SPEAKER_03 15:36

So, yeah, there's there's so much that's interesting about you, and if that falls outside of what you think is necessarily the criteria for that job, that doesn't necessarily mean that it can't go on the CV or that you can't include it in some way. Of course, there is kind of CV standards and you do want to be sticking to kind of templates and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

Nothing uh nothing to rague.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

Yeah, but at the same time, there's real value to be gained from not thinking so much what do they need to see, so much as what am I trying to say?

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Okay, cool. Fab.

Chris 16:06

So, Carl, if we fast forward 20 or 30 years and you've got a long career history, what would your advice be for shaping a CV for the role you want to apply to in today's market?

SPEAKER_03 16:18

Yeah, it's it's kind of the inverse of what we were just talking about, right? Which you have the benefit of having experience to draw from. Um, you've got professional experience that you can put across. So it then becomes an issue of selection, of picking out the most relevant stuff. Again, it can be tricky to do just on instinct, but if you get together a few job descriptions, kind of see the skills that are most in demand for the kind of roles you're going up for and work back from there, that can be a really good way to do it. Alternatively, you can take that approach we were just talking about, which is start from you and work out rather than start from them and work back to yourself. It just depends really how you're trying to position. If you have a really clear idea of the roles you're going up for, take a look at some job descriptions, see what's in demand, look at your experience and select the most relevant stuff. If you're a bit more open or if you just want to get your experience down and see what comes to you, then I think a good starting point is what makes me different, what makes me interesting, what are the passions, the enthusiasms, what stuff have I enjoyed in my work, start from you and work outwards.

Chris 17:19

And are there rules or conventions in terms of what the expectation is from a recruiter as to how long a C V you should be if you've got a long career history?

SPEAKER_03 17:29

Yep. So length is one of the things that we actually have a little bit of data on. A lot of the time in CV writing, we're talking about best practice and things that sort of have worked through experience. We have two data sets for length. So we have uh recruiter preference data, which almost always says that one page is best, then two pages, three pages or more are an absolute no-go. But we also have hiring data showing who got interviews and who got hired for roles. That tends to put one, two, or three pages at much of a muchness and four or more pages that drops off a cliff. So I think what we can deduce from that is recruiters do want you to be as clear and concise as possible. They always prefer more information in less space so they can get their head around it and understand it as simply as possible. But I don't think that most recruiters are rejecting a perfectly well-qualified candidate for a job because their CV is too long or too short, right? It's um it's it's a matter of first impression. It's important. So I would say one or two pages is usually about right. But if you are still adding stuff that's really important to you and you're into a third page, try not to sweat it too much. It is still acceptable.

Chris 18:37

Good to know. It sounds like it, if it's good content in terms of it, it's building your credentials in terms of your fit for the role, they're going to keep reading, which is good to know.

SPEAKER_03 18:46

Yeah, absolutely right. I think the the key question to ask yourself is is this going to get me close to interview? And if you've hit a point in your career where you're saying stuff that's way more junior than your role now, or from a career that you had in the past that isn't really relevant anymore, it's not getting you close to interview and you can start cutting back. But if you're going into that third page and it's still new stuff that might be the extra sell that gets you through to the interview, then keep adding.

Chris 19:09

Okay, good advice. Thank you. And with the market the way it is today, obviously a lot of disruption, a lot of people are having to pivot, make changes. If someone is looking to apply for a role that's not just more of the same in terms of what their career track record shows, but they want to move in a different direction, what should they take into consideration in terms of how they construct a CV?

SPEAKER_03 19:30

I'm really glad you asked that. It's a really fun synergy with what we just spoke about. So I suppose my advice is think like a graduate for a moment, right? Right, okay. Which is go back to that idea of what do I enjoy, what lights me up, and why am I making this career change? I think that's often going to be more profitable. Of course, you do have the additional benefit of being able to look back at your own career history through that lens and think where do those things show up? So if there's a particular element that you enjoy and you're trying to pivot to do more of that, you can pull from your career history the times at which you have done that thing. That might be just a case of only including those items in the career history, or it might be a case of creating a separate section at the top where you can highlight particular things like a career highlights and then a career chronology, for example.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 20:18

Loads and loads of different ways to do it. But I think overall the thinking is why am I making this change? What's the story here for me, and how can I tell that effectively within the CV format?

Chris 20:29

All right. Good stuff. Thank you. And then I think the other thing that almost always applies for someone that's got uh quite a long career history is there may well have been some gaps, whether that's due to a layoff or a period of unemployment, taking a career break time out to raise children or caring for someone. What would you recommend in terms of how someone handles gaps in employment on the CV?

SPEAKER_03 20:54

This is one of the major changes that's come about since I've been CV writing. So in the last sort of seven or eight years. And I I think it's probably COVID that did it, which is career gaps I don't think are perceived with the negativity that they used to be. So it used to be the standard when I started writing that you would include just a one-liner about why the gap is there, what you were doing. You can be as kind of opaque about that as you want. So you could say career break for personal development, for example. I think though, recently, because there's been so much disruption in the job market, like I say, initially driven by COVID, but then since so many ups and downs. I think that career gaps aren't perceived with that same negativity. A six to nine month career gap is just what some people have in their CV. It's not a question anymore for a recruiter of why has this person been out of work? What's wrong with them? I think if you get to, you know, a year or 18 months, you might start wanting to plug that gap with, I don't know, the traditional things like some volunteering or doing an online course so that you can show that you've still been active, anything like that, you can still. Still plug the gaps with that. But I think actually a gap of a few months now is not something to worry about too much. You can probably just leave it out of the CV and focus on the experience that you do have.

Chris 22:10

Okay, that that's really interesting. I I would have thought up to six months people would think as just half of the course, but you're saying actually a bit longer, six to nine months, you know, people aren't gonna it's not gonna raise a red flag, but longer than that, maybe put something in about what you were doing, whether it was caring, retraining, volunteering, those kind of things.

SPEAKER_03 22:30

Yeah, I think so. I always have to be cautious about things like that because when you put a number on it, it can sound too much like a rule, right? Obviously, if you are going to interviews or if you're not getting interviews and you think it's coming down to that career gap of three, four months, then maybe you do need to write something in there. And you know, I think it's it's important, or it's helpful rather, to remember that your CV isn't just one thing that you write one time and that's the thing you have to stick with. You can iterate and change it and test different versions. So if you write something in that three-month career gap and suddenly your interview rate goes up, well then it great, you've closed the career gap and you're on the right track. If it doesn't make any difference, then maybe it wasn't the career gap and you can test something else out. Um but yeah, broadly, I think career gaps way more tolerated than they were, and career gaps of a good few months way more tolerated than they were. Right.

Chris 23:19

Good to know.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

Um, I would like to take over the conversation now to talk about big, scary AI. Uh, and I've heard loads of stories, mostly actually from my dad, who I think's trying to scare me about my future, about about how my CV is never gonna actually be seen by a person, and my fate is basically in the hands of AI and robots, and people are getting rejected almost instantly for hundreds of roles they're applying for. So, how do we give ourselves the best shot of getting around that obstacle and actually getting to the interview? What is up with AI here?

SPEAKER_03 23:55

It's such a good question, and it's honestly one that I don't have a super easy answer for. There used to be a very quick and easy answer, which is the main uh technology that recruiters and large companies are using are called applicant tracking systems. That's ATS.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:12

And largely they are scanning CVs for the keywords that are in the job description, and they're prioritizing them according to the ones that are the best match. So the classic answer is load the keywords in there and you're on a better track. There's also a load of stuff about design to just really oversimplify some very boring Microsoft Office Word stuff that I do every day. Uh, it's a case of writing stuff directly onto the page rather than having it in tables or columns or fancy graphic formats because some of that can be difficult for an applicant tracking system to read.

Chris 24:45

So, Carl, you mean like no text boxes and things just correct.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

Yeah, absolutely.

Chris 24:49

Plain text on a page left or right.

SPEAKER_03 24:51

Yep, just as you write it in the Word document. You can do stuff within that. You change the colour of the text, won't matter. You can change the font within reason because they use uh optical character recognition. So you don't want it to be a font that they just totally can't read because it's difficult. But as long as it's you know one of the one of the readable fonts, they'll pick it up by one of the readable fonts. I mean the ones that we all know, the Arial, the Times New Roman, etc. So yeah, that used to be the advice: keywords and formatting. That being said, things are changing a lot, and those applicant tracking systems are already building stuff in where recruiters can type free text to you know put their search together. So they're not just searching by keyword, they're having a chat with the system that's suggesting CVs to them. Um and likewise, people are using AI, right? So keyword matching now becomes really, really easy because you can plug the job description into Chat GPT and that can pull out the keywords for you. And if anyone can do it, then it's less of a useful selection method, right? It's you know less of a useful way to whittle down your applications because everyone's done the same thing. So I think, and this is where we get into conjecture rather than fact, but I think what I'm seeing is that bringing uh some of the stuff that we've spoken about earlier in this conversation, the more human stuff, the differentiation, what makes you different or interesting, or what lights you up, or what your passions are, or finding a way to write it that breaks out of that very rigid, typical kind of CV voice, but is still professional and push yourself across in the right way. I think these are the things that are going to differentiate us going forward. Because I think keyword matching, whilst it is still really important, I think it's becoming less of a reliable method of selection for recruiters, and I think systems are evolving past it.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

Yeah, even when I've looked through people's like Google Forum applications for uni staff as well, and it's really obvious that something's just been chat GBT'd and it's like it is very robotic and clean. Uh avoiding that is people who avoid that they stand out um and have a bit more to them. So obviously that translates into big girl jobs as well. That's good to know.

SPEAKER_03 26:56

I think you're exactly right. The the the strength of AI is it makes good writing or acceptable writing accessible for everyone, and I think that's brilliant, actually, right? I think that if you are just somebody who's not confident that you haven't made some silly mistake somewhere, to be able to have this generative text that you know puts it in perfectly acceptable terms for you is great. The unfortunate side of that is it makes everyone stand out in exactly the same way, which means no one's standing out.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

The same way. Yeah, the tone is all the same. Yeah, there's like there's little things you get as the M-dashes, and then also like the the rules of three, like all that kind of stuff. It's good. I totally agree with you. It's really good that people can take maybe jumbled up ideas they've got into their in their heads and put them on the page, but everyone does come out the exact same way. So again, in that kind of vein, should we be writing for humans then and not for the robot checkers?

SPEAKER_03 27:50

Yes, there's there's always a balance. I think I've I've always advised people you're writing for three audiences when you write your CV. So the first is that kind of technical or automated audience, that applicant tracking system, that AI, whatever it is that they're using. And it you do have to give them consideration. It's not that you can put that aside altogether, but you've got two other audiences to think about as well. One of those is what you might call an uninitiated audience or um a kind of recruiter or an HR person who isn't doing the job themselves, but they're going through and shortlisting CVs. So that person wants to see, again, keywords, so they're still important, but they want to see the stuff that they've been briefed to look for, most importantly. They want to be able to scan it really quickly, understand the relevance, and decide which ones to put forward to their clients, who's the, you know, the company that's hiring. And then that's the third audience, which is the person who's interviewing you, the person who you're gonna be speaking with at the company, maybe the person who's gonna be on your team. If you write for all three of those audiences, I think you're on the right track. You can get into trouble if you over-emphasize any of them. So if you go, I'm gonna write entirely for humans and never mind the keywords, well, then it might not get in front of a human. I'm afraid your dad might be right about that one. Um, but then at the same time, if you tilt way too much towards keyword matching and you're trying all these tricks like putting white text in the headers so that so that the job description automatically reads through and all of these things that have been going around for however long, you then get in trouble of a human reader sees it and it has no res resonance for them, no warmth, no interest. Um, so you do need to make sure that you're writing for the systems, unfortunately, but humans mostly, because they're the people who are going to make the decisions.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Okay, cool. Good to know. One of the other things as well that I wanted to ask you about, this was something that my friends asked me to pass on when I was chatting to them about this episode. We've kind of spoke about AI-friendly formatting, but also I wanted to talk about gimmicky things that people might use to stand out. So photos, colours, canva, collages, the full lot. Is that a yes or a no there?

SPEAKER_03 29:56

It's a no. But it's a no with some new ones. So I think gimmicks work once, typically. If you've heard about someone doing some crazy, ridiculous thing and it got on the job, then that's worked for them. But then when another 20, 30, 40, 100, 1000 people do it, not so effective. That being said, I do think there is a case to be made for if you have a creative idea for something that might work, follow through on it and see if it works. Goes back to what I was saying earlier about you don't just have one CV and you have to stick with it. So you can write your ATS-friendly, keyword-heavy CV. But then if you see a Canva template you love, to use an example, try putting it in that and sending out to see if it works. In my experience as a CV writer, it probably won't. They don't tend to scan very well into applicant tracking systems. Recruiters tend not to like them because they're not so quick and easy to cast your eye over and find key information. But I'm not averse to new things coming out and new things working and trying ways to stand out that might go against the grain. Feel free to test it if you really, really want to. But generally speaking, the reason that we have the rules and the best practices we have are because they're things that we know are effective.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

I guess it depends on the job. I guess you have to read the room a little bit because I remember seeing something, it was like a really creative marketing-y type job on TikTok, and someone submitting a really funky CV that did end up landing them the job. But then the issue is that's on TikTok now, and then every other marketing job in the country is getting this crazy creative design CV. So read the room, basically. Other things that my friends brought up when I was speaking to them about this customizing for the job spec. Is there anything specific on there? I guess that's kind of similar to what we spoke about earlier.

SPEAKER_03 31:41

Yeah, but I think I can be pretty specific about how to do it. I really like printing off a job description and going through it with a highlighter. I am aware that tech tools these days far supersede that old-fashioned method, but I think there's something about getting hands-on with it and highlighting it that just kind of helps you think critically about it, see the words that you think are the closest to being buzzwords or keywords, highlight them and make sure that you work them into the CV. If you are putting together a CV that you just want to be keyword optimized broadly, right? So if you're, I don't know, uploading a CV to a recruitment agency, I think you can do that at scale. So you can print off 10, 12 job descriptions and you know, the skills that are in all 12 of them are the most important ones to get in. The skills that are in 11 are your next priority, the skills that are in 10 of them are your next priority. So you can be really methodical about it. It is also worth saying, though, that none of these are guarantees, and no matter how much you keyword optimise, all of this other stuff we've been speaking about today is in play as well. Yeah, we don't know what recruiters are searching in their applicant tracking systems. They could be searching for terms that you know you know nothing about. They might be searching for someone in a particular location, but that's not mentioned in the job description. So there's only so much that you can do. Um, but I think those would be my my kind of quick reference ways to make sure you've got the keywords that you want to get into the CV.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Okay, Bab. I feel like that's all for me on my end, but I know that, Dad, you're desperate to ask a question about today's today's market.

Chris 33:12

So, yeah, something I'm unclear about in today's market, Carl, is if people still do cover letters and and do recruiters also expect them? And if so, what would your top tips be for how the cover letter works alongside the CV instead of just repeating what's already in your CV?

SPEAKER_03 33:29

Well, you are not the only person who is confused about the role of co-letters. Um, I think almost everyone is, and I'm including recruiters in that. I speak to recruiters a lot of the time who say they don't read cover letters, but then so often they're required or they're asked for as a part of the application, or it's left ambiguous to see if you send one or not. I think that the issue with cover letters is that they're so easy to do badly. And you've hinted at one of the main ways that people do it there, which is you just rehash your career history in prose rather than in bullet points.

SPEAKER_02 34:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:00

I think that doesn't really add much value. It just gives someone a lot of extra reading to do. And we know that if we give huge blocks of paragraph texts to a reader, it's overwhelming. That's why we format CVs as bullet points. I think there is a really strong way to do a cover letter, and in fact, over time I've come to really advocate for cover letters, even if they're not requested specifically, okay, because I think they're a really good opportunity when you do them right to add a level of narrative framing to the CV. So to tell a reader, here's how I want you to read the CV. That way, if they read it, they've got extra context. The way that I would do it is write an introductory paragraph about yourself. So the sort of way you might typically open a cover letter. I then really like to use bullet points in a cover letter, which I think a lot of people don't necessarily think of, but to say, here are some key areas of my experience that fit especially well with your job description, and just highlight what those are and point them towards the CV, and then a concluding paragraph that says, I'm available for interview, and wrap it up there. The reason that I think that's useful is that it bridges the gap. You've got the job description, you've got your CV, and the cover letter sits in between and shows the relevance of them. So the CV is not having to do all of the heavy lifting, but at the same time, if they don't read the cover letter, they've got the same quality of information in the CV. So I think it's just about framing and positioning your experience that's in your CV for the specific role that you're applying to.

Chris 35:27

That all makes a lot of sense, and you have re-energized me around the idea of cover letters. It's not just this relic from the 90s when I used to print them off on like that fancy paper you could buy in WH Smith's and put them in an envelope. There's there's still a need for a cover letter.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

I love a cover letter. My first CV, it was like you have to tell them why you want the job, and I was like, it's £4.35 an hour. I don't really want the job, but there we go. It's good that I'm glad your love of cover letters is lived on.

Chris 35:56

Yeah, yeah, that's good. So, Carl, is there anything else we haven't already talked about which you would say is important to take into account with CVs today?

SPEAKER_03 36:05

I think it's maybe about a broader approach, which is there's a lot of information out there, and it's all been accumulating online for much longer than I've been writing CVs, and a lot of it contradicts itself. Some people will say, you know, going back to your question, it needs to be two pages or three pages or one page, and some people will say you only need to include these things and don't include that, or do or don't include hobbies. I think the advice that I have really is to be led by yourself to some extent. Okay. There is a lot of advice going around. There are people like me who've read all that advice and narrowed it down to the stuff we see most or what the best practices are. But even I'm open to being wrong about some of it sometimes. If you've got a really clear instinct about what you want to say, the way you want to say it, why you want to say it that way, I think it's almost always worth listening to that instinct rather than trying to fit in with everyone else.

Chris 36:59

And as you said, it's an opportunity to test things, isn't it? It's unlikely people only have sort of one shot at this. They're probably going to be applying for multiple jobs. And if the first version of the CV doesn't seem to be hitting the mark, then you look at it again, refresh some things, try some things out and see what starts getting interviews.

SPEAKER_03 37:17

Yeah, and really specifically on that, I this is a bit of a left field analogy, but I do you know the the magician David Copperfield, Vegas magician? So he's got this thing about feedback where he always has people that he trusts shows, and he asks them after every show, what did you hate? And then he says, I forget it immediately afterwards. They tell me what they hate and I forget it. But the stuff that still keeps me awake a week later that somebody said that's the stuff I go back in the show and change. And I think that's such a good bit of advice for CVs because people will always give you their opinion. Like I say, sometimes those opinions will clash, sometimes they will or won't make sense to you. Get your feedback, ignore it, and then the stuff that's still sitting with you a week or so later, that's the stuff you need to go back and change.

Chris 37:59

Yeah, that's a good approach. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

We touched on it a wee bit earlier on, but just to kind of wrap up, we've done a lot of like the how-to's and the explanations, but I am really intrigued by this idea of you being a career storyteller. Tell us a wee bit more about that and how you see your work as different to just listing somebody's job history and bullet points and achievements in a neat and presentable way.

SPEAKER_03 38:22

Yeah, thank you. This is one of those things that really has come out of writing CVs, how I have for so long, which is I noticed that when you just form someone's experience into those bullet points, like you say, and follow those rules, you might end up with a stronger CV. But what you also end up with is a bit of a confidence boost, right? People think it's nice to see themselves represented so clearly and succinctly as that. And I started then trying to be a little bit more creative with it, think a little bit bigger. This is especially sped along by the stuff we were talking about earlier, with AI being able to write the kind of CV rules that were my stock in trade for a really long time. It's thinking about where's that differentiation. And the differentiation is everyone's story is different, right? There is such a richness and diversity to people's careers. Everyone's had a different career, everyone's loved and hated different things about different jobs, everyone's hobbies or interests or family life have bled into their career in different ways and different manners and ways that have taken them on different paths and trajectories. And I think that's the really, really juicy stuff. So career storytelling is using document writing, so not just your CV, but your cover letter, your LinkedIn, your biographies, all of that stuff as a means of articulating yourself on the page and getting a kind of surer sense of what your career story is. So it helps not just with job search but with overall career development as well. It helps you think about where you are, where you're going, and the story that you are in and want to live.

SPEAKER_00 39:51

I love that. That's like you're helping people get jobs and you're giving them like a little note of confidence. How fun.

SPEAKER_03 39:57

Yeah, absolutely right. And just helping people think about themselves in different ways through the writing. Because I think not to get not to get too uh literature nerdy about it, but one of the beautiful things about literature is it's how we understand the world. Stories are how we relate to other people and other experiences and how we relate our experiences to others. And I think that's really overlooked when you open a CV and start writing a hardworking professional in the ex sector, right? That you switch that part of your brain off. But if you switch that on while you're writing that document, you can write something really compelling and unique and something that says something powerful about you and does something really powerful to the way you think about yourself professionally.

Chris 40:39

And that's something I wanted to pick up on, Carl, because I know you're an avid reader, have multiple degrees in in literature. So if anyone knows what a good story looks and sounds like, you know, you've got lots of examples to draw from. And both Lily and I love to read. Lily is doing an English degree, so you guys can swap notes on favourite authors after this. But tell us a bit about how you work that into the way you work with someone uh in in terms of literature and storytelling.

SPEAKER_03 41:08

Yeah, well, there's a couple of things. I mean, the first is I always enjoy to ask on a call with somebody what stories they like most or relate to, and that could be books or it could be films or it could be, I don't know, a painting or a poem, or absolutely any kind of um engagement with culture or arts. I spoke to somebody who's quite senior in financial services recently, and the thing that they were most passionate about was architecture. They've never had a career in architecture, they're just fascinated by it. They love to walk around town and see different buildings and think about how they got there and who built them or what they were thinking at the time, and they find that really inspiring. And so then that's something about how they think and the way that they approach their work and the way that they structure, in their case, the projects that they've worked on. They're thinking about how things fit together, how things fit in with other things that they've done before, and how things can be differentiated, and that's from their enjoyment of architecture. So I like to ask about that kind of thing because I think it could be really revealing about a person. The other way in which I use it is stories aren't just about the overall story, right? It's not just beginning, middle, and end, although that is compelling. It's also about the way that you tell them. Down to a granular level, word choice, exactly which words you use and what connotations they have. And once you get to a word-by-word level, the same way that you'd analyse a novel or a poem or anything else that you read, if you can be that intentional about writing about yourself, you can really use it as a piece of self-discovery, right? Exactly what word is the right word for how I feel about this thing or what I enjoyed about that can be such a magical way to think and such an engaging way to think.

Chris 42:44

And if someone would like to know more and follow up with you about your approach to CV writing, uh, what should they do?

SPEAKER_03 42:51

They can find me on LinkedIn, Carl Scutt, uh, or you can go to yourcareerstory.co.uk.

Chris 42:57

We'll put those links in the show notes, Carl. If someone was to take one thing away as to a sort of guiding principle around approaching their CV, what might that be?

SPEAKER_03 43:06

I think that the the one guiding principle is to be less stuck on trying to think about exactly what you're expected to say and be more focused on what you want to say or what you think is important to you. Because I think there's a lot more profitable stuff there. I'm not saying go totally off piste, right? I do think take advice, take guidance, look at a few different templates online. There is some element of fitting in that's required. But I think if you get really lost in the thinking of what do recruiters want to hear from me, then you can get really stuck in the trap of all of the things that you're not and all of the things that you can't do instead of all the brilliant, wonderful, interesting things that you are.

Chris 43:50

Yeah. So kind of give people permission to be themselves, let some of that personality come across in the writing.

SPEAKER_03 43:57

Absolutely. Let the personality come across and feel free to experiment with different versions. Fantastic.

Chris 44:02

Well, thank you for all of that advice. Uh I think it's going to be really useful for everyone. Thanks for joining us.

SPEAKER_03 44:08

Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for having me, guys. It's been a pleasure. I hope it was useful.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

Oh, it was really useful. Thank you. Oh, fantastic. That was great.

Chris 44:14

Really, really good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Thank you so much.

Chris 44:16

Lil, do you get something useful from that?

SPEAKER_00 44:18

Sure, Dad. I'm feeling reassured that the robot Armageddon Doom CV black hole isn't as big a deal as you said it was.

Chris 44:28

So, Lily, how are you feeling now about the prospect of having to pull together a C V for a proper job after you've graduated?

SPEAKER_00 44:35

Um no, it's good, especially given the fact that at the start I was quite concerned about originality and how to make yourself stand out. But I feel like Carl's really answered all of that for us and explained about how I can make my personality and unique strengths shine through. So yeah, really enjoyed that. It was really helpful. What about you?

Chris 44:54

I think it's that word originality again. That's a really good word choice. I think I had been sucked into this idea that you had to follow all the rules and write for the bots, but actually was quite inspired by what he said in terms of let your personality come across, break some of those rules, because that will be what helps you stand out. So it's not the same as everything else. So I think that will stand anyone in good stead in terms of how to approach that hurdle because the CV is the thing that's going to get you the interview. If you found that episode useful, please take the time to give us a five-star rating or write a short review. That will really help us learn from your feedback and other people, discover the show. And if you have any ideas for future topics, then by all means drop us a line. The contact details are in the show notes.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Gen XE Exchange.