A myriad of technology is now available to recruitment organisations to help store, locate and identify high calibre candidates for their client’s recruitment projects.  Sophisticated recruitment specific databases and web search technology helps the recruitment consultant to speed up the initial phases of a search and take the legwork out of exercises such as qualifying qualifications and experience gained within specific industries. The question then is, do people who are looking for new opportunities take these new developments into consideration when putting together their CV?

Traditionally, your CV is a list of the things you have achieved in your career to date. It shows a list of your qualifications, your roles and responsibilities along with your main achievements.  As web technology has impacted upon the industry, it is important to consider the content of your CV further.  “Peppering” your CV with phrases or words that that might be searched for in Boolean driven screening mechanisms should now be a norm when writing your CV.

It might be obvious to people from within your industry sector for example, what your company manufactures, what the client base is, what manufacturing process you use, what engineering technology you employ on site, what lean manufacturing tools you use etc, the reality is that many recruiters searching on-line job boards may not find your CV if you don’t make things obvious.

So if you are an Operations Manager in an Aerospace Foundry for instance and are looking to secure a similar role in a similar organisation, then ensure similar terms such as Operations Manager, General Manager, Foundry Manager, or whatever type of job title you would be interested in are within your CV. Furthermore, consider what other search terms recruiters may search for… so Foundry, Investment Casting, Lost Wax, Precision Casting etc (if relevant) would need to go in.

Interestingly, if you will be ranked against other CV’s found in the search based upon how “relevant” your cv is. This is based on how many of the recruiters search terms are located within your CV and actually the FREQUENCY of the search terms. So if your CV had Operations Manager in it 3 times, it will appear more highly ranked than someone who has the term in their CV once.