Easy CV and interview tips

Gone are the days of people spending their entire professional lives at one organisation. In these days of constant change, professionals don't stick around for too long, jumping profiles and companies at regular intervals, constantly on the look out for a better offer or a more challenging environment.

However, from the company's point of view, the recruitment and training of employees costs a lot of money, thus making them cautious while hiring new candidates.

While looking for suitable candidates, companies refrain from hiring professionals who frequently switch of jobs understanding the constant job switches to mean:

• Lack of commitment
• Inability to stick to one role for long
• Being unreliable
• Being money-minded
• Inability to get along with people
• Lack of clarity in job profile

If the prospective employer suspects that any of these statements holds true for you, the chances of your CV getting shortlisted for an interview become bleak. Somehow, if you do manage to get an interview call but are not able to satisfy the interviewer's curiosity about your job switches your chances of getting through are again meager.

So, if you have switched many jobs recently, here are some tips on how to write your CV and handle the interview questions.

Writing the CV

Your CV is your ticket to the job race. It is the first thing about you that the prospective employer looks at. Its purpose is to fetch you an interview call.

The recruitment team gets hundreds of CVs in response to one job notification and spends a few seconds on each CV, while screening. If your CV can't impress the selectors in 30 seconds, its purpose is defeated.

Keeping this in mind, you have to draft your CV in such a way that the prospective employer first gets to see the most relevant and positive information about you. This can be done if you follow the following simple tips while writing your CV:

~ Focus on your skills

If you have switched jobs very fast (less than one year), keep the focus of your CV on the skills acquired rather than the jobs you have done. This can be done by listing your key skills on the front page immediately after your career summary.

~ Write about your achievements

Your achievements during your last jobs communicate that this is what you did for your last employers and this is what you can do if they hire you. So, write your achievements immediately after your skill set in your CV. Use some figures wherever possible. For eg, if you were responsible for recruitment in your last company, you can write: 'Recruited 35 employees over a period of six months to match the company's target of 80 per cent growth in terms of Human Resources.'.

If you worked as the purchase manager in your last jobs, mention any formal recognition received from your former employers for your role.

~ Mention your qualifications

Your next weapons are your qualifications. So, if you have good professional/ educational qualifications, write about them after your skills.

~ Use words with greater impact.

Use words that show your control over things like acquired, approved, managed, analysed, resolved etc.

~ Last jobs on last page

It is human tendency to pay comparatively less attention to the information on the back pages. The same holds true for the information towards the right hand side of the page. So, write about the jobs you've held on the back page with commencing and leaving dates towards the right.

These tips should help you in drafting an impressive CV.

Acing the interview

Once you have got an interview call, your next target is to clear the interview. For this, you need to satisfy the interviewer's queries on your job-hopping. Here are some most frequently asked questions in this regard and their possible answers:

~ Why have you switched so many jobs?

This can be the most direct question on this subject. While answering this question you can say that: "I wanted to broaden my work experience and to achieve it I had to move out of the company". Continue with an example explaining your logic behind it and the success you achieved with it.

~ What will you do if you get another job offer with a higher salary?
The purpose of this question is to know if you have a tendency to switch jobs for a couple of thousand rupees. You can answer by saying that the money does attract everybody but you will try to analyse the growth prospects in both positions. If your present job can offer you the growth you seek, then you will stick to it.

~ What does growth mean to you?

This question can arise from the answer to your last question. You can answer by saying that growth according to you is broadening your experience and acquiring new skills.

~ Do you get bored of repetitive work?

The agenda of this question is to know if you can stick to a role for a significant period. To answer this question you cay say that, you understand that each job has an element of repetition but you enjoy doing your job and will give it your best