The catch-all CV
Sending fifty identical CVs is useless. To retain the attention of recruiters, a CV must be personalized and customized to the position targeted. The ideal is to have it correspond as closely as possible to the skills asked for in the employment ad.
Michel Ohayon is a recruitment specialist at the firm Barbara Shore and Associates. According to him, “Recruiters are looking for specific expertise. We do not comb through CVs for fun; we are always looking for the candidate who is best suited for a specific mandate.” Thus, CVs that are impersonal or not detailed enough rarely get selected.
It is vital to highlight the important information to show recruiters that you have the exact skills they are looking for. You should avoid copy-pastes, or sending your CV as a mass mailing without any customization. On the contrary, you need to be able to sort and adapt the contents of your CV according to the companies you are targeting.
Don’t be too general
“If you present yourself in too general a way, because you want to give the impression that you can occupy any position, it doesn’t work,” insists Elodie Darras, employment counselor at Citim. “It ends up giving the impression, instead, that you don’t know what you want to do.” It is better to favour quality over quantity. Take the time to figure out the type of position the company is looking to fill, so you can customize your CV to each specific situation. It is not a bad thing to have a prototype of your CV. However, you should always give yourself room to manoeuvre to tailor it according to the prospective reader, if only to modify the title.