Life as we know it is getting shorter. Digital technology is impacting our attention spans and decision-making capabilities to become increasingly immediate, and this is having a significant effect on the recruitment process. Our partners ETZ Payments share their thoughts on why CVs are in need of a shake-up!
Given the competitiveness of the job market, lengthy CVs are failing to capture potential employers’ attention. Instead, recruitment agencies need to be looking for quick and captivating ways to make their candidates jump off the page – straight to the top of the interview shortlist.
How can you achieve this instant impact? Let’s look at some of the ways your agency should be reformatting contractor CVs for the always-on age:
Cut straight to the chase
Gone are the days when companies would be happy to sift through handfuls of multi-page CVs. Time is a precious commodity, and your clients want to see up-front whether someone is right for their advertised vacancy.
Instead of focussing on how many things a contractor has done, make sure skills and strengths are the first thing featured on their job applications. This will show immediately how their experience fits the relevant role, showcasing the attributes that will ensure they are shortlisted for interview.
Think about how candidates are marketing themselves on social media channels like LinkedIn; your outreach needs to mimic this quick impact, marketing-focused approach to make them stand out from the crowd.
Make it visually appealing
One major impact of our digitally-driven society is that we’ve become much more visually minded, so presentation aesthetics matter when you’re suggesting candidates for interview.
Think about how you can use imagery and graphics to bring contractors’ skillsets to life; some professionals have had great success reformatting their CV as an infographic or YouTube video, for instance.
Eye-catching fonts and graphics can really help to capture the attention of future employers.
Consider your keywords
Increasingly, time-strapped organisations are outsourcing their talent search to technology, and you need to consider the requirements of this automated process. For example, some big corporations are using AI tools to screen CVs, pulling out candidates with keywords that match their job descriptions for further consideration.
It’s more important than ever to think about the qualities and qualifications that contractors need to be successful in a role. As we’ve already mentioned, making these the focus of their CV will pique employers’ interest, and getting the wording right is just as important to ensure they are top of the pile in relevant online searches and data crawls.
Find the time to make candidates the focus
In the new world of digital recruitment, less is more, but this doesn’t make recruiters’ jobs any easier. In fact, when you’ve got less time to make an impact on your clients, it’s even harder to ensure that contractors stand out.
Too many recruitment agencies miss new business opportunities because they are focusing on day-to-day admin, rather than giving candidate profiles the time and attention they deserve. Companies are looking for true chemistry with new hires, and only an innate understanding of what makes each contractor tick will enable you to pair skilled workers with the right jobs.
In order to devote more time to talent searching, your agency needs to find ways to reduce the administration burden on your business and focus on value-add activities. The simplest way to achieve this is to outsource mundane, repetitive tasks such as timesheet and expense claim management, invoice creation and payment chasing to automated technology.
By putting recruitment back office software in place, you can feel confident that essential business processes are ticking over nicely, while concentrating on the more demanding task of redeveloping your candidates’ profiles. This will ensure that you and your contractors are still getting paid on time, whilst you’re busy securing new contract opportunities.
Nick Woodward is CEO at ETZ, specialists in back office technology for recruitment agencies.
