[2022-01-12] Skills-based CV

A young woman starting out in her career emailed me today to ask whether I would be willing to forward her CV on to my colleagues.

Whenever I am approached to pass along a resume, I always read the document first. Many of the CVs I review do not do justice to the person's education, experience and skills, sometimes burying their best attributes on the second page.

If you are just starting out in your career, for instance, your education—a degree or diploma—may be your strongest selling feature, as you may have little related experience. In such cases, you would do well to list your academic credentials near the top of your CV. Similarly, your past employment may have little to do with the kind of work you want to do in the future, leaving the people reviewing your CV to guess as to the type of work you're seeking now. To remedy this, you may want to include an objective statement at the beginning of your CV to indicate the field that interests you and what relevant education and experience you bring to it.

Some of my feedback to the young woman who wrote to me today reflected the advice that I had included in my post Make your CV scannable and other tips. But in re-reading that post tonight, I realized that I had failed to talk about two important aspects of CVs: alternatives to the traditional work-first resume and the order in which information is presented.

Frequently, CVs begin within a listing of jobs in reverse chronological order, starting with the person's current position. This format works well for established employees who have experience in the field they want to work in. A hiring manager can quickly scan job titles to see that the candidate has experience in the field and worked in increasingly more senior roles.

But if you are at the beginning of your career, starting your CV with a list of work experience in unrelated domains does nothing to grab the attention of a hiring manager. And if the jobs you have held to date did not require post-secondary education, the potential boss may never scan far enough ahead in the document to discover that you do have a pertinent degree or diploma. In such cases, moving your education section to the top of your CV may avoid this issue.

If—like the young woman I counseled today—you have little relevant experience in the field you want to break into, you need not feel obligated to follow the most common CV format of listing your employment along with the functions you performed in each position. Instead, you may wish to present your CV by emphasizing your skills and abilities, noting where these were acquired. For example, you may have developed writing skills at school, via extracurricular training, during volunteer work, on the job, or in your personal time (e.g., through writing a blog). Or you may have honed your public speaking skills through participation in a club, acting in a community play, or facilitating a workshop in your job.

Take stock of everything you bring to a potential job. Think about the education, skills, abilities and experience you have that would be most valuable to a boss in the field you're interested in. If you don't know what a manager in your desired field is looking for, contact a few of them for an informational interview, asking them how they got to where they are, what they look for when hiring people in their field, and who would be a good person to whom to speak to next.

If you organize your CV to emphasize your skills and abilities, you might want to include the following sections in this order:
  • Objective - what type of position you're looking for and what education, skills, abilities and experience you would bring to the organization
  • Education - the highest level of education you've achieved, with an emphasis on the name of the degree or diploma
  • Skills and Abilities - competencies that are most relevant to the job you're seeking
  • Work Experience - short list of job titles, identifying for each the organization in which you worked and a few highlights of achievements
For more work-related posts, you may wish to revisit my Compendium of posts: career.

The young woman who sent me her CV has a university degree in social sciences and a college diploma in professional writing. In addition to writing skills, she has competencies in editing, proofreading, web design, fact-checking, research and customer service. She is able to work in teams, carry out multiple projects at once, use office software, work under pressure, manage her time well, adhere to procedures and support senior staff. With a fresh approach to her CV, these attributes should jump off the page.