Page 75 - James Caan - Get the Job you Really Want

What are the secrets of
an effective C v?

Remember that the person who you want to hire you will spend

no more than a few seconds, a couple of minutes tops, scanning
your C V, so it has to be impressive, and instantly e≠ective. It’s
exactly like Dragons’ Den: each entrepreneur has only a matter

of minutes to pitch themselves to the Dragons to guarantee an
investor’s interest. This time the product is you.
There is no room for a finely worded, beautifully composed
story of the ins and outs and ups and downs of your career. You
need to present your experience, strengths, skills and ambitions

in a short, accessible package: minimum two pages, maximum
three. Anything longer is not going to be read. In fact, most
decision makers say they want to know immediately, from the

first page alone, that there is a positive match between the job
and the candidate, and really don’t want to dig any further.
When you are writing a C V, the first thing you need to ask
yourself is, ‘What is the job I’m applying for?’ Most people write
generic C Vs. Now, bearing in mind that the employer is looking

for a specific candidate with a specific skill set, when faced with
a generic C V the employer has to read the whole of the C V to
try and find the appropriate match, by which time they have

generally become bored. C Vs are cold pieces of paper which have
no life. No one is going to spend too much time reading them.
My impression is that most people think that a C V is a formal
document, some kind of legal document. It is not – although

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