Master your CV to increase Interview Invitations drastically

A CV is NOT a biography. With you CV you need to achieve more than promoting yourself. You are setting the tone for all next steps. Because organizations are made of people. And the people reading your résumé´ decide in seconds if they want to continue reading.

I share with you the two fundamental questions everybody has who reads your CV. No matter the organization or the job. And that you need to send the right signals to be considered going forward.

If sending a CV means communication, you need to understand the people you are communicating with. It needs to be relevant for them. First step is to see in which environment organizations operate. What challenges are they confronted with and which skills they need their employees to have to be successful in the future.

Here you learn why organizations hire and what they hope for. This insight will allow you to communicate with impact. You are not begging for a job but present a solution to their problem.

Get to know the major players in the hiring process. What their roles are and how their office life typically looks like. Understanding them will help you talk communicate adequately and win them over. One of your readers might be a robot. We´ll talk about it as well.

There are 4 mistakes that will kick-out every CV within seconds. You must not have any of these killer mistakes in your résumé.

One of the killer mistakes are gaps in your timeline. I tell you how you can make them work for instead of against you.

After spotting mistakes, the mindset of decision makers changes. They are now searching for reasons to invite you for an interview. There is a filtering process going on. I share with you how that works. Only if you pass all criteria, they see you as being serious about your application and indeed a professional. We´ll branch out a little bit towards social media, as those might work for or against you.

Do you think that you must fulfill all criteria laid out in the job advert? You must be able to do everything from day one? Afraid of failing? I will explain those mental barriers and misconceptions that hold you back to apply. Those are often bigger traps for women than man. I want you to surpass them.

We have seen some theory so far. Meet James and Lisa and see how they applied for a job as cook. The case study will ask you who of them (if any) you would like to invite for an interview? And why?

You will see with your own eyes what differentiates a powerful from a weak application. It is a simple explanation and you can adapt it right away. My mentees tell me that they have never looked at it like that before and after following these examples there résumé read much more convincing.

You will learn step-by-step how to compose your achievements so you clearly show (and not just “tell”) the value you will bring.

A résumé is all about words. I´ll explain which words to avoid and which to use instead. They will make your achievements shine like diamonds and recruiters see what you did.

The achievements or accomplishments are the heart of your CV. But there is more to a résumé than those.

I also have a secret sauce for CVs. Whenever I saw it as hiring manager it made me smile and giving the candidate an extra point. I´ll tell you.

Hard facts are an important element. You will hear what to include or exclude and where to be careful with. I wish we would live in a world without discrimination. As this is not the case, let´s see how we can reduce the risk of that at least a little bit.

Skills and competencies are important. We´ll go through the different types of skills. Which skills are needed to do the job, which skills are organizations looking for, the importance of transferable and social skills as well as the skills for the future. With this, you will master your skills section with bravour. We will touch on the impact of attitude and that checking your attitude is one of the reasons why organizations interview.

Your CV starts with your name on top. What comes right after it? That little block of text is called the narrative. There are different concepts of how that can look like. I talk you through them, so you can choose which works best for you. If you want to use it, there might be reasons that you don´t.

We´ll also reflect about "personal mission statement" and why it is good to have one, even if you do not want to bring it out in your CV.

You have collected all the information you want to include in your résumé. Good work.

Yet, there might be more than what fits on one, two or three pages. I tell you how to decide on the number of pages.

I share a step-by-step approach how to condense your content if needed. As difficult as it might be seen, the CV will benefit from it and your message to your readers will become stronger.

All what has been covered so far answers to the first question the CV readers have about you. If you apply what you have learnt, they will say "yes".

But what about the second question, if they can trust you? This can only be answered during an interview, but you must signal your trustworthiness already in your CV. You do not want to give them reasons to doubt it.

I´ll explain why trust is important and what is does in our relationships.

I´ll explain the different elements trust it is made of. It is not a hard fact but can be worked on and improved. You will learn which trust element are best included in which CV building bock. These are small, subtle changes but critical signals of your trustworthiness to your readers you better include.

Most of the work that gets done is done in teams. Recruiters need to check if you would fit into their team. I´ll explain how that works.

This is a good place to explore company culture versa team culture. Team culture might be very different than company culture. It defines your day-to-day reality at work much more that company culture could do.

Even if you are a star candidate, maybe the best they ever had. You still might not hear back or get the job. There are "internal" reasons that got absolutely nothing to do with you. I'll share them with you.

If you apply what you have learnt, your invitations for interviews will increase drastically. That was my promise, and I am still convinced about it. I´ll share a checklist that you can use to validate if you have not overlooked anything.

Yet there are reasons why you are rejected in the CV as well the interview phase that got nothing to do with you. I´ll share those. Being rejected is a terrible feeling, but if it is not this job for that organizing, there will be another one to come for another organization. Which might be even better.

This is to wish you well and great success with your job-hunting.

I have suggestions what to learn after this. There are even more opportunities to further increase your chances for interviews.

You might have heart the term “comfort zone”, or something like “leaving the comfort zone”.

Buckle up and get ready for some casual wisdom about the comfort zone and what leaving it involves