So when was the last time YOU updated your CV?

A recent article in the Irish Times by the recruitment firm Hudson highlighted that an estimated 92% of CVs received go straight in the bin. Their research showed that a high proportion of CVs are discarded after barely a glance due to poor grammar, spelling, punctuation and irrelevant content. Another interesting fact to emerge is that an emloyer spends on average only 30 seconds reading a CV!

Many people who find themselves in a situation where they need to seek employment struggle to combine all those years of experience, achievments and accolades into a concise and impactful representation of their skills and experience (aka THE CV!)

Each week at our meetings we take time to critique and proof-read all our member's CV's with the red pens and highlighter treatment, and we mean business! This is not for the faint hearted, but remember: this is the single most important document you can and will ever produce, and is so much more than simply the sum of its parts.
We aim to provide some tough love; honest, open and simple feedback. If you follow our advice, your CV has a better chance of being in the 8%.

You may have heard about the greatest job in the world recently, ie the Island Caretaker Job. Essentially, the job advertised by Tourism Queensland sought the right person to look after a paradise island near the Great Barrier Reef. If you would like a creative and innovative approach to writing and designing your CV, take a look at the link below which shows the final 16 applicants from over 34,000 people who originally applied for the job. Each applicant had to produce a 60second video, take a look at the final 16.

http://www.islandreefjob.com/#/finalists

After viewing these, you may wonder what all the fuss is about trying to get your work experience onto two pages. Your job is to excite your reader and capture their interest: give them something to think about!!