‘As I mentioned on my cv’ say inexperienced interviewees sometimes when we rehearse in workshops. Interviewers often don’t like this. It makes them seem stupid, or that they are requiring you to go over content, they should have already assimilated. In your opinion.
Depending on your experience, you can theme your CV to suit the job, the sector and the angle of your achievements you want to come smartly in on. For instance, you may be able to illustrate excellent team strengths in one version, and practical problem – solver in another.
Everything on your CV is an item: a story, piece of evidence, testimony, case study. It needs to be conveyed in the most gripping and accessible way possible. Experts often suggest using the STAR formula to shape CV items : situation, task, action, result. But I prefer the minimalist and slightly simpler version: AAA, standing for:
- Assignment – the situation you were in
- Action – what you did
- Achievement – what the result was
Let’s go through each of these in more detail.
Assignment
The situation you were in needs to be described as a clear overview rather than a detailed, thorough picture. You are setting up the story here, going for vividness, clarity and minimum detail. So rather than:
‘The company had been through a merger, morale was low, people were confused, the team I was in was in disarray and having merged with another dept’ (Intee starts to yawn here.)
Something more like :
‘We, our team, had merged with another department. But morale generally was very unsettled after the whole company merging.’
Gets to it quicker and Intee stays engaged.
Action
Action will involve you using the ‘I’ word. And being as specific as you can be in your use of verbs. Good ones include I ‘organized’ ‘ reduced’ ‘recalibrated’ ‘redeployed’ ‘reassured’ ‘motivated’ ‘cut back on’ ‘engaged’. Probably three verbs describing major action will suffice before it starts to sounds too list-like.
Achievement
Then the results. If you’re naturally self-effacing and modest here, then this is going to be tough. But you need to be as specific and as quantifiable as possible.
Contrast: ‘we made a lot more money’ with ‘we increased profit by 11%’
‘everyone worked a lot harder’ with ‘productivity was up another quarter’
‘morale was much improved’ with ‘ we staff paid for and organized our own Christmas party!’
Let’s apply what you’ve considered so far and link it to your AAAs:
1. Recall your ideal job title and the top three skills and qualities you judge this role to require.
2. Pick three items from your CV to illustrate you have these skills and qualities and shape them into AAAs.
3. Now remind yourself of the type of problem solver you are … what distinguishes your approach to this?
4. Pick an item from your CV to support this and shape it into an AAA.
Cracking Grommet – you are well on your way to being interview-fit now.
Be wary of falling for the myth of the well-rounded person when you do this. Sometimes job seekers get possessed by need to depict a holistic version of themselves, when the employer is looking for a specific match to role requirements.
That doesn’t mean they’ll find it interesting or even fascinating if you’re a pot holer, mountain biker, or gourmet Thai chef. But if you try and illustrate all three of these plus the fact that you are a computer programming whizz, marvellous mother and loyal and devoted friend, then the main thrust of your pitch for the role of project manager will get lost.
You need to attract, guide and illustrate for Intee’s attention. They want and seek a match.