What Does Customizing Your CV Mean & What Are The Benefits?

“Over time I have read on articles that advice on CV writing. Most professional’s advice is that you need to customize your CV if you want to get shortlisted for an interview”, reads part of an enquiry from John Mulu. But he continues to wonder, “Does it mean that I have to tailor it to every job I want to apply for? And do I have to keep changing it for all the jobs I apply for?”

Well, Melody Mwendwa one of the Career Advisory professional at Corporate Staffing Services Limited clears the confusion about CV customization. She say that, “It’s all about showing the strength, skills and competencies you possess guided by your experience and the industry you are in.”

She continues to give an example with an accounts professional, ” As a rule, you are required to apply for positions matching your experience so your CV should feature a lot of accounts skills and strengths However, in case you want to apply for a sales position, it will be hard to customize that CV to fit the sales position.”

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So how do you customize your CV?

1. Profile summary

“A profile summary is the very top part of a CV. It briefly introduces the candidate to the employer/recruiter,” notes Ms Mwendwa. She advises that, “When coming up with your summary make sure to include some of the key terms frequently used in your career.” She gives an example, “I am a Certified Public Accountant with experience handling accounts receivables/payables, preparing accurate balance sheets.” By just looking at this an employer already knows what industry you are in even before they proceed to your experience.

2. The key skills and competencies

When it comes to highlighting your competencies, stop going with what every average job seeker is using. She says that, “Terms like ‘hard working’… ‘Able to complete work within deadline’ are not likely to distinguish you from the next job seeker.” She advises that, “Instead use words like, ‘skilled in the preparation of budgets, including income, expenditure, balance sheet and cash flow for review’, such wordings add value to your CV as they are key skills

3. Work Experience

For the working experience make sure you add value to your day to day activities. Ms Mwendwa gives a situation where, instead of just saying ‘handling data entry’, you could go a step further and say ‘I was able to successfully post accurate data including invoices, petty cash transactions in the accounting system and this led to accountability and increased efficiency’. This she says is rich with value demonstrating how you worked and the outcome of your role, thus represents the candidate well and allows the employer to take note of your value and job outcome.

Additionally, to customize a CV means, you are adding or maximizing key roles or skills that are align well to the position you are applying for. For example, if you are taking on two roles in your current work (as an accountant and sales person), and you intend to apply for an accounting job, minimize your sales roles and add more value and roles relating to the accountant job you are applying for, as opposed to having so many sales roles and very few accounting duties.

READ ALSO >>> Should You Include All Work Experience In a CV?

In conclusion Mwendwa advices that, “Customizing a CV goes a long way, today’s digital age where technology is replacing almost everything. You need to make sure that recruitment systems are also able to pick key aspect or key terms commonly used in your industry as a digitalized recruitment process majorly rely on those terms to pick a CV related to the specific industry.”

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