PR Recruitment Agencies
Recession-proof your CV and improve your interview hit rate
As market conditions worsen PR job seekers are facing stiffer competition for those all elusive PR roles. This means your CV has to work much harder in front of potential employees to be selected for interview stage. Whilst the majority of us can spend hours putting together our CV, the reality is that potential employers will spend about 30 seconds looking at yours before making a decision whether to interview you. More than ever your CV needs to make an impact, be free of mistakes and provide a clear indication of what you want in your next role.
Top tips to beat off the competition....
1) Make every word count - avoid repetition of job responsibilities as you move up the career ladder.
2) A potential employer will look for weaknesses in your CV experience and presentation before they consider the strengths. Any gaps in job history, vague explanations without statistics to support it, will be viewed negatively and as attempt to cover up areas of weakness.
3) Take the time to tweak your CV to reflect the job briefs you are specifically applying for.
4) Mirror the terminology potential employees use in job descriptions and job adverts to help put your CV at the top of the pile.
5) Put down key achievements for each position and where applicable support with hard hitting facts - i.e you achieved 100% increase in coverage and 97 pieces of national press coverage.
Top tips for Senior PR players
1) Add some well chosen statistics to demonstrate your heavyweight expertise and how you can add value to an organisation or team.
Examples would include;
- how many new business wins you generated
- budget size for inhouse and overall client fee income for agencies
- number of PR consultants you managed
- evidence of business you could generate in the future where applicable
2) Potential employers are not mind readers! You need to elaborate on your experience. Don’t be fooled into thinking you need to keep your CV to one page and end up putting short phrases to explain your experience:
For example don’t do this!
- Media relations
- Issues management
- Events management
They will never know the extent of your work. It also gives the impression that you rushed your CV and don’t really care massively about your career.
Author - Louise Hannant - April 2009
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