Tag Archives: Project management CV

CV Writing, Project management CV, project management resume

Free CV review for Project Management professionals

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It is tough making a decision to move on in your career when there are fewer roles about and a great deal of uncertainty in business makes you wonder if you may be jumping out of the chip pan into the fire. However, we have been experiencing economic unsettlement for a number of years now so just how long can you put up with your current circumstances? Holding on for a more stable market can indeed be a sensible option for you, but as a project professional you are used to dealing with risk and as such you know how to investigate and ensure your plans come to fruition.

Bearing in mind the advertised roles are not in abundance and working hours can be restrictive for researching the hidden roles – especially when you are not 100% bought in to leaving your current role, you need to ensure the roles you are applying for yield positive response. The best way to do this is to dust down your CV and update it with your most recent experience, ensuring it says all the right things about you and your skills and also meets recruiters and employers expectations.

We are offering a FREE CV REVIEW for UK based project professionals – you can submit your CV and we will be in touch to arrange a telephone appointment to talk through your CV, explaining all the good bits and constructively talking through the parts which are not working for you. The review is performed by a seasoned project management recruitment specialist who has reviewed thousands of CVs over the years for every industry and all roles falling under the project management umbrella from project support, risk management, change management, business analysis to programme directors to name a few.

The benefit of having a project management CV review is to really understand the recruiter perspective and help you formulate a way to improve your CV. Once you know how your CV is viewed you can start to understand why you may not be hearing back from job applications and also be able to take the stand point of loading your CV to job databases so that employers and recruiters can contact you.

You are under no obligation to take up the professional project management CV writing services but if you are interested we can talk through a bespoke service which fits in with your schedule and financial constraints. Not everyone needs a full rewrite but a few essential tweaks can make the difference between gaining interviews and being ignored. Send your CV for a free review today!

Job Applications, Project Management Careers Advice, project management jobs

Organising your Project Management job search

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Project management is all about being organised and disciplined – it makes us more efficient, however as prepared as we are in the office / about our projects, some of us are less organised outside office hours. Now that is not to say in everything we do as we still need structure to function, getting the kids ready for school, walking the dog and making sure we all eat at the right times etc. but when it comes to applying for jobs. It can be a case of go online, find a few project management jobs, adjust CV accordingly, apply and then forget all about them until you (hopefully) receive a call.

Creating a good impression with HR and recruiters is a must – they are the gate keepers, if you mess up with them, then your application goes no further and all the work you put in to writing a cover letter or reshaping your CV has gone to waste. Therefore it is important to make sure you keep a note of what you are applying for, a simply excel spreadsheet will suffice. Create a few headers for the columns such as job title, salary or day rate, location, reference number, agency/business applied to, date applied, version of CV sent (make sure you name your CVs so you can track what went where), where you found the advert/role (this may be a particular search term or website) and date to follow up application.

Once you have this document you can print it off or email to your phone (screen shot it for Apple products) and then you are ready to take calls from recruiters and employers on the go – when you receive a call, ask who is calling and the job title they are calling about. Ask them to hold the line (say you are taking a private room) and scan through your document for the role. You will sound far more organised and professional as you talk through the job and are more likely to gain success with the “gatekeeper” to actually get your CV put forward to the hiring manager for the position.

You can use the spreadsheet to collate details about where you are finding relevant jobs from which will assist you moving forward in deciding which websites you should be spending more time / less time on, noting dates for applications and setting follow up dates to call employers / recruiters is great practice. All the good project management people are always following up actions!

I cannot emphasise enough, the need for a professional approach to job applications – remember first impressions. Don’t blow it with an agency by answering the phone unprepared and sounding disinterested, there are plenty of other great candidates out there who are happy to take your place and will do so if you fall at the first hurdle – excuse the Olympic themed idiom!

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

Off the shelf CV advice

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Having spoken with a great deal of job seekers both over my recruitment years and more recently as a careers adviser, I have been both surprised and concerned about the type of help out there for those wanting to improve their CV in the hope of achieving better prospects moving forward. One client I spoke to recently had previously engaged in a professional CV writing service with a large name in the industry – he sent his CV in with a payment and received a document which just didn’t make sense. The leading CV writer had reshaped each of the bullets with very poor English and clearly had never dealt with a project management CV before. Having sent back his CV 4 times for changes to be made, he was met with a response that the leading CV writer had worked on it this time so it should be perfect. I saw the CV after it had been reworked and I am still in shock, he did receive a full refund and was very cautious about seeking assistance moving forward.

Another client of mine had sought assistance through downloadable advice documents from PM specific websites and found that the documents were useful to a point but really missed what she needed in terms of information specific to her. I sympathised, and also have documents which are a guide but cannot address everything / everybody as it would have to be a very long document – maybe there’s a book in it!

The fact of the matter is that as much help and guidance there is available online and in published pieces of work on professional CV writing; there isn’t something which is specific to you. This is one of the key drivers for The CV Righter – we work with you every step of the way to ensure we keep your CV reading like you but relevant to what employers want to see. No off the shelf work is undertaken as this takes away the value of the service, we have clients who prefer to write their own CV and have scheduled feedback / consultancy meetings to ensure they are keeping on track and keeping to the point etc. And we have clients who use us in a more traditional sense and have us write their CV and we have regular meetings to discuss progress and ensure the CV is true to them. We are flexible because we are not off the shelf! For a free CV review, send over your CV today – let’s talk about what can work for you.

Careers Advice, guest blogger, News, Recruitment

Standing Out To Employers In These Economic Times

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Getting on to the employment ladder is a very tough task for a lot of people nowadays. The economy finds itself in a state of continued difficulty and there is little argument to be had regarding the assertion that the credit crunch has separated the weak and the strong in terms of supposedly simple things such as having a job.

The days of employees being able to casually amble on through their working lives, doing the bare minimum and spending half of the day watching the clock and waiting for the glorious moment when the little hand hits 5pm seem to have come to an end. In fact, to some people’s horror, it is quite the opposite; now there simply are not enough hours in the day and most people find themselves taking their work home with them.

The truth of the matter is that this is exactly what separates people in the employment game. Companies can no longer afford to hire staff that simply will not pull their weight any more. Of course they would not have wanted to in the first place, but financing for businesses is now at a situation where a few wrong moves in the recruitment sector and the business could be facing severe difficulties. Nowadays, companies demand the most from their employees and rightly so. A lot of companies can demand employees that are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty in their roles; they want employees that are willing to stay behind after hours to ensure that the work gets done.

This new found expectation from employers has no doubt come as a bit of a shock for some people and may be a factor that is directly attributed towards the high unemployment figures that seem to be reported every other day.

What is the solution for those people who would not exactly classify themselves as the dedicated type when it comes to giving their all in the name of employment? The only thing those people can do is either adopt a working pattern to make an employer sit up and take notice or alternatively they can join the millions of other people in the Job Centre. The tough economic times are certainly not what anyone wanted or envisaged but they are still here and they are affecting people so the only solution is to, as with most things, get your head down and work.

This blog post was written by Kelvin Whittaker, a specialist in the recruitment field, particularly accounting and tax recruitment writing on behalf of www.pro-tax.co.uk.