CV Sifting Software

Handsome_Chris

Has anyone on here got any experience of these?  I'm getting 'advised' to put white words into my CV but I'm sure that people must have caught onto this trick.

dafuzz

It's contentious - some people now say that you will be 'downgraded' for it.

Recruitment consultants that I know say they do everything manually - ie they will scan your CV for about 10 seconds (if that!) and make a judgement call based on relevant experience / quals / skills. So putting tons of action words in 0.1 pt white font will do nothing.

My best advice is make sure that the key words / phrases from the person specification appear somewhere in your CV / application form. Make sure all the 'essential' skills are represented and at least mention one or more 'desireables'. Use the employer's exact wording if possible. Check your spelling and grammar ffs! And don't say anything you can't back up at interview.

Public sector is a bit different but I've not bothered to talk about that since CVs aren't commonly requested. Actually, now I'm second guessing myself, a lot depends on what exactly you're doing - sending a speculative CV to a company, applying for a proper advertised job, passing your CV to somebody following a personal recommendation or getting yourself on an agent's books. Anyway...

Best of luck!

chillidoggy

Good advice, and as dafuzz says, check your spelling and grammar. If you get a pedantic bastard like me reading your CV, it'll be in the shredder immediately if I spot any errors.

Phil_aka_Pip

I always thought recruiters used grep to find the buzzwords

thermionic

You're crediting them with far too much intelligence there.

Phil_aka_Pip

@thermionic is probably right. There must be someone who has given them a tool which uses grep, they probably don't invoke it directly. They're smart enough to click on something but not smart enough to issue a shell command.

bertie

its not always "recruitment types" that read the CVs....................  we  as technical owners for solutions get passed CVs to read if we need to source skilled resource outside of our co.

Phil_aka_Pip

@bertie I'm sure that you value an initial screening so that you don't get asked to look at irrelevant stuff, but the "recruitment types" know so little about your technical requirements that they are still capable of giving you useless CVs and of filtering out others that would be good for you if you could see them.

bertie

Phil_aka_Pip said:

@bertie I'm sure that you value an initial screening so that you don't get asked to look at irrelevant stuff, but the "recruitment types" know so little about your technical requirements that they are still capable of giving you useless CVs and of filtering out others that would be good for you if you could see them.

they're always screened - we always get given "appropriate"  CVs.   Skill requests are normally VERY specific.

If the "words" arent there in the black,  then they wont be forwarded.......... no good having them in "white text"

CabbageCat

You simply start your CV with "Handsome Chris - Cobol programmer - not C# Java JSP .net jQuery...".

It's what everyone else will be doing.

chillidoggy

I used to let the recruitment types get on with it, until I realised they were crap.