The Modern C.V. ñ Curriculum Vitae or Completely Valueless..?

Employers beware: C.V.s today may not be worth the paper they are written on. New survey findings from Stopgap, a leading recruitment consultant in the marketing sector, reveal that the overuse of stock phrases amongst job applicants is in danger of rendering the modern C.V. meaningless.

The survey results show that job applicants in Britain are simply parroting back the criteria that the employers themselves have already defined in job advertisements. There is a high correlation (see below) between the assets sought and listed by employers in their job advertisements and the assets claimed by applicants in their CVs. This leads to employers being deluged by C.V.s from applicants relying on established clichs to market themselves and hence, ironically, failing to help them stand out from the crowd.

Top 10 C.V. clichs % Top 10 Job Ad Stock Phrases %

1. Communications Skills 35 1. Communication Skills 41
2. Team Player 28 2. People Management Skills 35
3. Project Management Skills 27 3. Creative 30
4. Results orientated 25 4. Strategic 23
5. People Management Skills 24 5. Project Management Skills 22
6. Creative 23 6. Team Player 19
7. Meet deadline 22 7. Commercial Knowledge 19
8. Motivated 21 8. Leadership Skills 18
9. Thrive on challenges 20 9. Negotiation Skills 18
10. Organisational skills 17 10. Analytical 17

Claire Owen, the Managing Director of Stopgap, comments: ìGiven that communication skills are rated as the most important skill in the marketing industry by employers and applicants alike, the fact that neither of these groups are making the most of their opportunity to communicate with the other is frustrating. Applicants are missing the opportunity to sell their real strengths by falling back on platitudes. Employers encourage this trend - making their own recruitment process significantly harder, as well as wasting time and advertising spend - by putting out tired clichs, rather than more challenging job specs tailored to the true demands of the role. Employers should also outline the cultural identity of their company, thus attracting those candidates not only with the correct skills set for the job, but with the correct character fit for the company.î

Platitudes aside, the survey identifies another potential pitfall for applicants, as more and more C.V.s are full of superfluous information. Over two-thirds of C.V.s contain information on what individuals get up to in their spare time. More often than not, these activities fail to differentiate applicants as the same interests, namely sports and travel, appear time after time. In addition, 40% of C.V.s include information on basic I.T. skills such as Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and 15% of individuals feel that their grasp of email and the internet is a personal selling point.

Owen continues: ìAt Stopgap, we see C.V.s from thousands of job applicants each month. Many of these C.V.s are of negligible help either to the candidate they represent, or to the employer who is trying to assess their calibre. Information on I.T. skills and leisure pursuits are of secondary interest to a potential employer, and should only be included if they illustrate attributes which will add value in a relation to the job role. For example, leading a mountaineering trip would indicate motivation, leadership and strategic-thinking. However, citing ìsports and travelî as personal interests gives little extra insight into the candidate in question, and will not differentiate them substantially from thousands of others!

ìSo what should candidates seek to demonstrate through their C.V.s? Weíd encourage applicants to bin the jargon and get personal! They need to take time to consider the demands of the role for which they are applying and then focus their C.V. on evidencing relevant assets to that position. By using examples of past experience - work-based or otherwise ñ to testify to their aptitude for the job, applicants will put themselves in a much stronger position to stand out from their peers.

ìEmployers also need to revisit the way that they profile job opportunities in order to attract people with appropriate skills. To simply reel off a list of skills required for the job is to waste advertising spend. It actively encourages applicants to revise their C.V.s to incorporate those skills, whether in their possession or not. We call on employers to have the courage to break away from stock phrases and really focus on the job position that they are marketing. Rather than reeling off a profile of their ìdream candidateî, they need to detail the demands of the role, leaving the onus with the applicant to come up with the facts to prove they possess the requisite skills for the job. This will put an end to the abuse of stock phrases and lead to the receipt of far more enlightening C.V.s. Furthermore, when employers are describing the role in question, they should use the opportunity to place it in the wider context of the company as a whole. It is vital that employers recruit not only the candidate with the correct skills set, but with the right cultural fit for that company, using the company values as guidelines.î