All posts by Nicola Caswell-Thorp

//platform.linkedin.com/in.js
Careers Advice, Job Applications, Q&A, Transferable Skills

Applying for roles I am over-qualified for – Questions answered.

2 Comments

This week we have a fantastic question from someone looking to work for their dream employer – by (almost) any means….

Hi Nicola, can you advise about applying for a junior/admin role at your dream employers … Just to get a foot in the door at the right company. I’d be interested to know how to pitch an application for a job I could be described as over qualified for.

Vicky – Northampton.

Hi Vicky – great question! I’m not sure you are going to like my response though, as applying for roles less senior to your current role can be seen as a step backwards it is often the case that employers will discard your application for a number of reasons such as:

  1. HR / hiring manager may be anxious that you may be looking for a way into the business with no real desire to stay in the role – wanting to progress is great for most employers but when you are already a step or two ahead of the role, this means you will be in the advertised role for a few months before making a move upwards. This leaves HR and the hiring manager with the initial problem of filling the Admin role; this is essentially deemed as a waste of time and money recruitment wise.
  2. Suspecting you are looking for an easy-ride role, as it is more junior you perceive it as a job you can sit back in and not really engage. Whereas a less qualified person would see the role as a challenge and really work hard / demonstrate keenness.
  3. Your potential line manager may feel intimidated by you, especially if you have held a more senior role to them and have more experience – their job feels threatened by your presence.

My advice would be to wait for a role which is more in-line with your current seniority ideally as rejections for roles tends to put a mark against your name as candidates make an impression that they are either desperate for a role and applying for anything or didn’t read / understand the job descriptions – applications would then be rejected or put to the bottom of the pile.

Have you tried making a direct approach to the business in question? LinkedIn can be a great way-in, by looking up heads of departments etc and making contact you could start to form some relationships with the right people and then once a relevant role comes to your attention you can make an application and your name will already be known in the right circles. When you do make contact – ask questions about what career backgrounds the business tends to attract, how often XXX types roles come up and if you can get a fluid correspondence flowing – ask if you can meet for coffee. It’s playing the long game but it is more likely to harvest positive feedback and a way-in at a level you deserve to be at too (whilst gaining some valuable insider information which you can use to strengthen your application).

CV Tips, CV Writing, Friday Snippet, Job Applications, News, Project Management, Project management career progression, Project management CV, The CV Righter

Free Project Management CV writing essential guide

Leave a comment

Are you trying to put together your resume but unsure of what you should be included in your CV? Over the past couple of months we have covered a great deal of information on CV writing for project professionals on the blog and have drawn together all this information into one easy guide.

Covering areas such as:

  • An explanation of why job applications are rejected – a great start to writing your CV is to understand the pitfalls of making an application.
  • Basic CV structure – an easy guide through the structuring of a professional CV, what to include!
  • Understanding your target audience – you need to know what your prospective employers want to know about you, some handy hints to get you started.
  • Specific detail about writing your profile and examples of good and bad profiles.
  • The benefits of adding key achievements and what to state.
  • Employment history – addressed with specific examples of a role, written the right and the wrong way.
  • Information about stating referees and hobbies in your CV – understand how an employer views these.

This document has been compiled for those of you who want to write your CV yourself – however once you start to understand the complexity of writing your CV to include your experience and skill-set versus what the employer needs to understand, you may decide to take up the services of a professional CV writer such as The CV Righter. There’s no shame in it – in fact having a recruiters’ perspective to how your CV reads is invaluable in the ever competitive job market.

If you would like a free essential guide to CV writing, please contact us through our webpage here.

CV Tips, CV Writing, Job Applications, Project Management, Project management CV, project management resume

Employment history – CV tips

Leave a comment

The main component of your CV should be the careers history – this is the section which allows you to really sell your skills and abilities. You should look to tackle this by summarising your role and then bullet pointing your remit, ensuring you contextualise the information. It is important for you as the writer to create a mental image for the reader to really get a grasp of what it is you actually do, job titles can be very misleading and I do not condone changing these in your CV so it is important to make sure you are making your description of the role as true to form as possible.

Here’s an example of a role and remit which is not ideal:

Project Coordinator                                                                                            

Duties: worked successfully within a project team that developed the best scheduling practices to meet client project plans easing project monitoring and control, making tracking of critical paths effective and preventive measures applied to them reducing lead times.

  • Working as part of a team within a fast-paced environment, focusing on delivering work to a high standard of client satisfaction
  • Assisting in planning, scheduling, resource requirements in compliance with industry, company and regulatory standards
  • Responsible for coordinating on site contractors/ subcontractors overseeing activities during the project execution phase

This description is weak as it reads like a job description, we get no real feel for the size of team, types of projects, what methods are used and generally it demonstrates a lack of real understanding for the role.

Now here’s an example which works:

Project Coordinator

Overseeing and coordinating the day to day running of multiple interdependent IT change projects by supporting project managers and senior managers. Responsible for monitoring and updating all project documentation and MI reporting

  • Reporting directly to the Senior Project Manager and supporting a team of 5 PMs in delivering interdependent projects
  • Providing an interface between the technical teams (3rd party suppliers) and senior management (internal), being the first point of contact for the provision of information on projects.
  • Ensuring that relevant management information is captured, analysed and presented via powerpoint presentations at monthly senior management meetings

These are snippets of job histories; you should look to include further information about what you do with more bullet points. Ideally you would look to perform a skills audit on yourself, list out everything you do along the project lifecycle and start to package these into relevant groups then start to formulate your bullets, ensuring you keep some context (types of projects, size of teams etc.)

Once you have written your most recent role, work backwards adopting the same formula but ensuring you do not just copy and paste details. Repetition is not good in CVs; if roles are very similar then you may decide to talk about different aspects of each role to provide some variety to the reader and also to cover all your competencies. Ideally you would look to have a “master” copy of your CV including everything you have done – you can then strip out irrelevant pieces of information to tailor your CV to specific roles, making applications a little easier for yourself and ensuring you are sending a CV which meets the role criteria.

Careers Advice, Collaborative working, Friday Snippet, Happy work environment, identifying weaknesses, News

Transforming yourself in the work place – Friday snippet

Leave a comment

Being good all the time can be hard work and sometimes you feel it is hardly worth the effort but if you could wish away a few of your bad habits – how different would your work life be? We all have colleagues with annoying traits and if you don’t then you may well be the one with all the bad habits! Here I have listed a fun way to identify and manage them:

  1. Identify – find out what your habits are and which are less than attractive, ask your colleagues to write down 3 of your habits which they find aggravating, fold them up and place them into a bowl. Once you have them all (now this is important) do not take them to heart as you are actively looking to remedy the habits, by being proactive you are taking the right steps to a happier work environment. Now compare all the results and pick the 3 most popular to work on. To make this an inclusive and more fun exercise – why not ask everyone to do the same.
  2. Penalty – having identified your 3 bad habits you then need to set a penalty for each time you do one of them. A “swear box” for want of a better phrase, can be used. Set a fixed penalty cost for each habit.
  3. Replace – it is a common theory that to lose a bad habit, you should look to replace it with a good habit. Find something else you can do which is positive and helps to fill the void.
  4. Reward – at the end of a set period of time, say a month or two – take the penalty cash and go buy cakes for everyone. If it is a large office with everyone involved and a fair few colleagues are being fined regularly then the collection may be worthy of buying lunch in or a drinks kitty in the pub one evening.

Often we are unaware of our habits or unaware that they annoy others so it is important to highlight them and address them – this type of activity can be a real team building exercise and if facilitated professionally can really help build a much happier work environment for all.