Title.
I have a lot of skills I use in my hobbies and helping others out, I study tech shit, physical\digital art and other languages, but my current employment is so basic it doesn’t need any of these things. And I have no in-paper proof I know them.
While writing my CV, I feel pretty lost. My position doesn’t say anything at all, and I don’t know how to show I have experience editing photoes, sound and video in Adobe, coding shit in different languages when it’s needed.
Do you have some guides to write a good CV? Or how to write in your occasional works in unrelated fields?
upd: One fucking doctor in my field asked me why I’m still there with all things I did they know about. I didn’t know what to answer.
upd2: Thank you Lemmers, you rock.
I’ll always repeat this to everyone as my go to.
For starters don’t count yourself out. If it says college degree or cert required and you don’t have it, apply anyways. I ignore them every time and 99% of the time I get an interview.
For resumes/CVs make sure to copy and paste some of the language they use in the job description or post. Try to blend it into things you have done or the hobbies you do.
Don’t forget to also use references that are actually pertinent to the job. Your previous boss is a good one, but so are people who work in that field that can vouch for you. Don’t be afraid to actually ask people you know and name drop where you can.
Interviewing is a skill. Take notes, take time to answer questions, drink some water. Acknowledge interviewers and their questions and always try to stay on track of their question. Sometimes I have stories for my answers and at the end I like to bring it back by repeating the question and then explaining how that story answered it.
Lastly be reliable and helpful at your job. People don’t care if you don’t answer work calls or texts after hours, but they do care if you take initiative to help and ask occasionally if there’s something you can do to help. Don’t over work yourself, and remember to shit on company time, but do try to make an impact on key people so you can keep crawling up this shitty capitalist ladder.
Also, checkout Etsy for some good Google doc templates. I paid like 99 cents for a great resume and CV template that looks way better than I could have done in a few hours. I keep my resume, reference letters, any important job docs, and a spreadsheet of references in a Google drive folder (OneDrive, Dropbox, other cloud services work too obviously).
Pretty good advice. I’d add that almost all hiring managers are looking for someone they can teach/train who is reliable and wants to be productive. Someone with a ton of knowledge in their field but doesn’t show up half the time or who doesn’t meet deadlines is worthless. Trying really is half the battle. My best people were at the ground level when hired but had great attitudes.
Source: I’ve been a manager who hires in 2 industries for 20+ years overall.
That Etsy tips is so precious. Thank you very much !
There are some things I’m good at, and some things that I might be decent at, but would take me longer than a 99 cent download. 😅 it wasn’t worth my time after that.
This is good advice. I would caution on using some CV templates though. Some of the automated CV parsers get screwed up on certain formats and then think your CV is illegible and throws it away. There are some ATS scanners online that may help to let you know if there’s a problem with your format.
If you copy and paste my job posting into your CV I will throw that shit away, and if it came from a recruiter, they would be fired.
Based on how you skimmed my comment I’m going to assume you weren’t going to read a CV very well anyways.
Lmao
You want a functional resume, which focuses more on skills rather than work history. I know a CV isn’t the exact same thing as a resume, but it’s similar enough that if you searched “functional resume examples” you would have a good starting point. You can always include skills that you obtained through education/hobbies/volunteer activities too.
I never use cover letters, but I would in your case.
I’ve recently gone through something like 80 CVs for three positions and only one had a cover letter. In it they explained their situation and eagerness to have their career be more involved in the advertised position. In this letter, they explained a lot of what they know and can do which their current experience did not really indicate.
Their understanding of the role and clear eagerness to build into this pathway has scored them an interview. I see in them the potential to mentor and quickly train a very interested mind. If they’re as impressive in the interview, I’ll prefer them over people that are experienced and specialised, simply because they’re an eager clean slate that can hit the ground running somewhat, and that’s quite a breath of fresh air.
Another manager chiming in to say this all day over people who are entrenched in their ways.
I passed on interviewing a guy of 30 years experience because almost all of the new hires with little to no experience were outpacing their experienced counterparts.
Fuck that. I’m not writing every one of the 1000 jobs I apply for a cover letter, they don’t even have the wherewithal to reply to a resume.
They get 30-40 on average. It takes me the better half of the day to review them all. People have work to do; you don’t. Customise your resumes for the application and sometimes that means a letter in certain situations goes a long way.
If you’re sending out the same resume you spent a few hours doing, week after week, you’ve done five hours of work in several weeks. You can’t expect people working 40 hr work weeks, where reviewing resumes is an addition task, to then start writing personalised responses to every person.
Nah, bullshit, I’m not unemployed. The entire point of a resume is to give you a clear, concise summary of my abilities. You want more details? Ask questions.
Fuck your cover letter.
Fuck your “one way interviews”
That’s bullshit. I work too. Im looking for opportunities, not companies that design their application processes to cater to the people desperate enough to waste 1hr+ of their time for the chance for an actual interview.
Fuck that and fuck you too.
Write in accomplishment statements. There are plenty of guides online about how to do that. I straight up have a categorised list of skills at the top of my resume and then below they have an accompanying accomplishment statement that explains how I have used that skill. This gives an easy way for the interviewer to ask you about something you can talk to.
Attach a portfolio of work when appropriate, visual examples are great to show what you know.
I agree with this but really appreciate when people say if they did it with a team and what their role is.
I see resumes from people a year out “school” saying they did stuff in three months that takes a team of senior devs that long. I’m looking for honest team members. That experience is valuable and it’s ok to be the person who played a supporting role.
Yeah, don’t lie about it, just make it clear what you can do. At least when I interview people I will ask questions about your work experience that will show how well you know your stuff. I also appreciate when they show that they are good team players, both as someone working as a member, and if they are more experienced, both leading others and under others.
My technique is an initial conversation, then a soft skills interview, then a technical interview where I get a senior Dev to sit in. Long process but has excellent outcomes.
Have you checked the local Department of Labor?
The book ‘What Color Is Your Parachute?’ has been in publication for fifty years. Might be worth checking out.
I’m a russian. But I guess this book can inspire me too.
Applications the easy part. Its the behavioral interview questions that are challenging. Holy heck.
“Tell me about a time . . .”
Gives me the shakes
I usually write it in “other experience”. Personally I like to include the languages that I know with some description of how well I read/write/speak/understand them and my experience with working with those countries. I also include various hobbies in the more personal data section, even if they’re not related to the current position. It’s also perfectly fine to add an entire section just for IT-skills if you think it makes sense. All jobs involve IT somehow, so it’s usually a good idea to mention something about it. Even if the job doesn’t require you to know C++ or Adobe it still shows that you understand IT better than on MS Office user level
Write down in simple words without much thought what all your skills are. Throw those into chatgpt with the question to write a cover letter and make a CV. Tell it to ask you extra questions to complete the cv for you.
Et Voila!
