Although there are similarities amongst western countries for their recruitment methods, the UK stands out as a bit more hardcore with their HR processes!
We are often a smaller country than others with a busier labour market, with high ratios of applicants to roles. These pressures along with financial pressures for recruitment teams, has dictated their way of designing recruitment processes.
These are vital to know in order to design an excellent CV and cover letter.
You've probably been wondering:
- why is my CV being rejected?
- is ATS rejecting my CV?
- what's wrong with my CV?
- how do I write a CV?
I have insider recruitment knowledge from my time as a head hunter in recruitment and in my current role as Careers Consultant at Imperial College London where I hear from employers regularly on recruitment processes.
The common mistakes
Most people don't realise that the CV is most commonly the first thing that recruiters and HR look at when they go through applicants and it's the first document they assess. Because people don't realise this, they will often be tempted to take quicker approaches that leave the CV generic and the result is a quick rejection or ghosting.
The way to improve this is to understand HR recruitment processes and how they assess us. This is the knowledge I possess from my experience as a head-hunter as well as from engaging with employers in my current role as Careers Consultant at Imperial College London.
Surprisingly, CVs and even recruitment processes are different in every country. The careers advice and guidance I give is UK specific and even though it shares many similarities with mainland European recruitment practices or 'western recruitment' practices, the UK has always remained a more hardcore version of recruitment. This is mainly due to the fact the UK is not as big as some other countries but we consistently have a busy and competitive labour market. These two factors together make it more difficult to navigate and certainly more stressful. Unfortunately, resilience is absolutely required to survive the UK job hunt! However it goes much more quickly and much more successfully, if you've had career coaching to explain how to do each step of the recruitment process to the highest standard.
This means:
- reviewing the formatting of the CV - how does it look to a recruiter as a first impression?
- assessing how ATS will be able to read it - and yes, we as humans can assess this, it's less complicated than you think.
- understanding what can trip Application Tracking Systems up on some CVs and this can include formatting issues!
- analysing the language you use and seeing if it is actually communicating the messages it needs to, and that you want to.
- show you how to assess it yourself, just like a recruiter.
Never forget, humans, recruiters, are the ones that programme the ATS, it's not some magic mysterious new technology creating secret new criteria for us. It's doing exactly what the human recruiters used to do when they had time to read each CV. The problem now is they receive so many CVs they physically don't have the time to read each one usually.
My approach
We can usually fit a CV and cover letter check in a 1 hour online appointment which is great for giving you feedback on the formatting, language style, depth of content and if it will score highly.
There are some similarities and some differences between CV and cover letters and these are important to go through together.
I can help with phrasing examples, but I am teaching you how to do this for yourself so that you become confidence at CV writing and no longer need me!
I also provide a FREE CV template and FREE cover letter template.