The jobs market for communication professionals is tricky at the moment. If you talk to people who are recruiting, they will easily get over 100 applications for a mid-level role. If you’re in the public sector in the UK, a combination of NHS, police and local government reorganisations means job uncertainty and a possible increase in people looking for new roles.
by Liz Halliday
In such a competitive market, the old self-deprecating joke about how the only thing communicators can’t sell is themselves feels less funny. Over on the comms2point0 comms lifeline group, people have been discussing job hunts and sharing advice on creating a CV.
Keep your design simple
The main thing your CV needs to do is get you through the sifts so you get an interview. Recruiting increasingly uses Application Tracking Systems (ATS) to do the first sift. These systems won’t see if you’ve used a lovely template or font. Instead, keep it simple and accessible.
“Most of the time, in my experience, we have to beat ATS first. They don't care about niceness, just content.”
“Stick to simple formatting, nothing too fancy and don’t include any tables (ATS can’t read them).”
A simple layout and design also makes it easier for human sifters to read it easily. This demonstrates that you understand best practice around accessibility and how people read.
Keep a master CV
Several people recommended keeping a master CV. This captures everything and can then be used to create a tailored CV to use in applications.
Write down everything: what roles you’ve had and when, what you did in those roles and how you made a difference. What skills you used. If you volunteer, add what that involves. Put everything in, without worrying about length. This master CV is just for you, so you have it to work from.
I update my master CV every year, or after every interim contract. That means if I suddenly see a job I want to apply for, I know my master CV is up to date and I can get straight to the tailoring part. I also double-check my LinkedIn matches it.
Once you’ve captured, you can go through and refine each role down to some bullet points. Don’t take any out, just work on them so they are concise and outline work delivered and outcomes.
Keep to two pages
Try to think of this as an editing exercise! Again, showing your skills in practise.
Someone on the group asked about how long a CV should be, and the general consensus is two sides of A4. If your master CV is longer, then you want to create a shorter version. Pick out your best examples from each role on the master CV and put them in your two-pager. A couple of people are using AI to pull out the most relevant bullet points from their master CVs.
“My master CV is nearly five pages long. I’m getting AI to do the heavy lifting on my CV and then spending my time editing the humanity back in.”
Have more detail on the most recent roles: that first job out of university or college is not as important as what you’ve just been doing.
Details on your two-pager
A long list of jobs is great for an automated sift but can be rather dry for people to read. Several people include an elevator pitch about themselves and what they can bring. Think no more than three lines that reveal some of your character and uniqueness. In a pile of 100 CVs, why interview you?
Remember to include your contact details and any professional qualifications and memberships. If you have an online portfolio of work, make sure the link to it is obvious (and that it works).
Keep tailoring your CV
When a job appears you like the look of, you will want to review if your CV is hitting the brief. You might need to tweak some of your examples to meet the key words and phrases in the job description. Whether the first sift is by a person or a machine, they’ll be looking for the key words.
If you’ve a master CV, you might decide to swap some of the details out, if you have experiences that match the role better. This isn’t about removing any of your job history, but about tweaking which experiences within each role meet the requirements.
“Finally, show your CV to others, get feedback on whether it works, does it showcase you well enough? Will it help you stand out from the crowd?”
I once asked a peer to review my application for a job. They asked me why I’d not included a project that had taken years of stakeholder negotiation when it was a very relevant example. Lesson learnt!
Liz Halliday is a public sector comms interim, with twenty years’ experience in the profession. She also writes fiction and non-fiction. Her forever online home is www.magslhalliday.co.uk and her current social hangout is Bluesky.
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