Director and Executive CV Writing

As a C-Level, senior executive, or a mid-level manager looking to enter the world of senior leadership, your years of experience, education, and personal development may seem difficult to fit into a 3-page CV. So what should you include, what should you leave out, and how should it be formatted to ensure it stands out in the pile of resumes the recruiter is likely looking at?

The first, and most important tip is to have someone else look at it. Working on one’s own CV usually results in one of two outcomes; either the CV is too humble, not making enough of your years of achievements and hard work, or it is too over-the-top with industry jargon, which a recruitment professional may not be able to adequately compare with competing CV’s. I’m sure it’s no surprise that I would recommend using a professional service such as impressiveCV to help with this, but this recommendation is more than just a plug for business.

Professional CV writing and career consultancy services offer something that your colleagues, family members, and friends usually can’t, we do market research with recruitment agencies, and we keep up-to-date with both local and global trends in best-practice application preparation. This may not sound important, however just the smallest faux-par in a CV can send it straight to bottom of the pile. Some examples include the use of a photo in a CV, while this is a common practice in Middle Eastern recruitment, particularly for senior level-employees, but in Australia it is not recommended.

Another example is the perspective of the writing, many, if not all job seekers are aware that that it is considered poor- form to write your CV in the first person (using ‘I’, ‘my’, etc), but unfortunately all too often we see self-prepared resumes that have taken this what not to do information, and created a CV in the third-person perspective, for example “Stacey is known for…”. This is considered equally poor form in the recruitment industry, and may again be the one thing that sees you miss out on a role against a similarly experienced candidate. For your reference, CV’s should be written in a style called ‘the passive voice’, with no forms of personal pronoun at all, if you’re not confident in writing this way, please seek professional assistance from impressiveCV.

Personal branding is another hugely important factor for senior staff, but how do you get it into your CV? Start by identifying your brand; what is your leadership style, what do you value professionally?

Think of your personal brand as an individual version of a company’s Mission and Values statements. Identify your own mission and values, and embed that theme throughout the CV, you can do this in your elevator pitch, a sub-heading under your name, and as a theme throughout your achievements within the document. Find examples of ways you have lived up to this brand throughout your career and highlight them within your CV. Additionally, ensure your LinkedIn profile and any other online presences follow the same brand. A true brand needs to be consistent. For more information or assistance with creating your personal brand click here.

Finally, know the company. I can’t stress this enough know the company you are applying to work for. Know their history, know their values and mission, know their development plans. Take the time to research all media on them, and read their 5 year plan start-to-finish.

There are no short- cuts if you want to ace the application and interview process for a senior executive or C-level position. If you don’t know the organisation inside and out, past and future, but another candidate does, you can all but wave the job goodbye.

This is an area that even professional and highly experienced boutique Executive CV firms such as impressiveCV are not able to help you with, because we can’t sit the interview for you. We can help you source the information you’ll need, and we can incorporate it into your CV and other application documentation (ideally aligning it with your personal brand), but at interview it is up to you to know and understand the company, what they need, and how you fit that need. More information on Senior level interviews can be found here.

Final tips if you are planning to do your CV without professional assistance:

• The top half of the first page is the first impression. Use this space effectively. Highlight all of the most important information; your name and contact details, brand statement/elevator pitch, core competencies/areas of excellence, and most significant career achievements. Always use measurables ($, %, etc) and show personal growth and contribution to company growth wherever possible.

• Use white space and design effects to highlight items of most importance. In the most senior roles, use of Applicant Tracking System software is rare, so you can afford to get a little bit creative in your design, with career timelines or infographics. These should be used appropriately, and even if you are a design professional, I strongly recommend having a recruitment or CV writing professional review the work (many will do this at no cost) to ensure it still meets industry standards.

• Be concise. Keep the CV to 3-4 pages at an absolute maximum (ideally 2 pages if you can). Write with purpose and avoid all unnecessary or doubled-up information. If you had some of the same responsibilities in two different roles, only include them once; if you have highlighted an achievement in a specific achievements section, then ensure the achievement notes the employer/role, and remove that achievement from the professional experience section. Remove or reduce to a timeline graphic all employment more than 15 years old, and include only qualification title, education institution, and year of completion for items in the education section.

Finding New Work In This #Unprecedented Situation: Transferable Skills Are The Key.

Between Monday 23rd , and Saturday 28th March, at least 280,000 Australians lodged an ‘Intent to Claim’ for financial assistance, and while predictions of the numbers of jobs that will be lost before the Coronavirus pandemic is over vary, estimates between 500,000 – 1M jobs lost are not uncommon. So many people across this country will lose their jobs, but all is not lost just yet. The Federal Government have announced multiple rounds of assistance, with a $1500 per fortnight JobKeeper subsidy the latest in a long list of financial supplements, subsidies and supports at both State and Federal levels aimed at supporting employers and employees to stay afloat.

But who is hiring, what jobs are growing in demand, and how do we get the jobs? Short-term data and recent reports suggest IT, Healthcare, Communications, Banking/Finance, Retail (Supermarkets), Deliveries, and Public Sector have been and will continue to hire. Also, increases have been seen for roles such as Nannies and Tutors, and Warehousing & Production workers. A quick scroll through SEEK for Victoria confirms this – IT role, Banking, IT, Finance, IT, Personal Carer, Nurse, Software Developer, Nurse, IT… just under 23,000 jobs are listed as currently hiring. Coles, Woolworths and Aldi are hiring across the country, Centrelink is hiring, DHHS is hiring. There are jobs out there, so the next step is to find out what education, licences, and skills are required for these jobs – follow the job ads themselves, this will all be listed in a position description, but if they’re not, a quick google search of position description (insert job title) should bring up something similar.

• Education: If you need a formal Higher Education qualification, and you don’t have that qualification, keep this point in mind. For some professions, it means stop here, and look for a different job; for example, while lots of nurses and doctors are currently needed, a strong work ethic and a first aid certificate just won’t get your foot in the door. That said, significant industry experience and transferable skills might just get you by for a marketing or community services role, so don’t give up.

• Licences: Again, these are essential, sometimes even more so; Linfox and Dyers both have heavy vehicle driver roles advertised, but without the appropriate licence they literally can’t hire you for that job.

• Skills: There are really two types of skills to consider, technical skills and transferable/soft skills. You can define a difference between soft skills and transferable skills in some roles or industries, but universally transferrable skills are all soft skills. Technical skills can be summed up as the things you can do; MIG welding, coding, OHS incident analysis. Your soft skills and transferable skills are things you add to the team or the business that help it run better, such as communication, time management, prioritisation, leadership, innovation, problem solving, and creativity.

  It’s easy to box ourselves into thinking we can only do the jobs we done before, and it’s your soft skills and transferable skills that will be the key to changing jobs, whether its an ongoing career change or a temporary position to get you, your family, or your community through the current crisis.

  A great example of the importance employers place on transferrable skills, is that Woolworths, Telstra and Rio Tinto have offered thousands of jobs to Qantas staff who have been stood down in recent weeks, citing transferable soft skills and technical skills as opportunities to meet their own companies’ growing demands (see more here https://www.afr.com/work-and- careers/workplace/woolworths-offers-jobs-to-laid-off-qantas-workers-20200319-p54br5).

  Start thinking about how your existing skills can be used in other jobs and other industries. An experienced Front of House in a busy restaurant isn’t just a hospitality industry worker, they are a team leader with exceptional customer service skills, and retail staff can apply their calm demeanour with difficult customers to government or telecommunication call-centre roles. If you are not confident in recognising these skills and in re-writing your resume accordingly, contact Impressive CV for a free CV review, or take advantage of our current offer of a free LinkedIn profile optimisation with a standard professional CV package.

Written by Stacey Whitelaw.

Work Smarter, Not Harder: 12 Time Management Tips that you wish you learnt yesterday

Time management is one of the most rewarding skills that will take you far in your life — both personal and professional. If you aren’t managing your time effectively, sooner or later you would enter into the state of pandemonium. Time, being such a crucial aspect of life, deserves to be treated in the most respectful manner. Only if we learn to master the art of time management, our life would experience a positive change.

To take hold of every single minute in your life, you must know what is effective time management and how to manage time. Find out more with Impressive CV.

What is time management?

Time management is the coordination of tasks and activities to maximize the effectiveness of an individual’s efforts. Essentially, time management is enabling people to get more and better work done in less time.

Why is time management important?

Learning the art of time management could yield a positive impact especially on your professional life — where most of us suck at giving due time to each and every task. So, let’s take a brief look at the benefits it offers:

• Better task management

• Higher productivity

• No stress levels

• Better work-life balance

On the contrary, if you are unable to manage your time effectively you could experience undesirable consequences such as:

• Missed deadlines

• Poor work quality

• Higher stress levels

• Work imbalance

• Lead to a burnout

With effective time management, employees can easily manage their hours to the best effect. When things go as per the plan, employees tend to be more creative, happier, and less prone to burnout at work. Thus, it makes sense to take some time out to learn about time management tips and techniques to benefit your career.

Time management tips at work to achieve your goals:

1. Wake up early — Make your day longer

All of us get 24 hours in a day. Though it’s not possible to change the number of hours in a day you can definitely try waking up a little earlier and make your day longer than others. Ideally, your body requires 6–8 hours of sleep to be at your optimum energy levels.

Start with setting up your alarm 15 minutes earlier than before and increase the time frame with the course of time. You can use this additional time to exercise, meditate, prioritize, or even to pursue a hobby. Gradually you’ll increase your daily productivity and time management will never be a trouble.

2. Set SMART goals — Don’t just wish, do

Do you know that there is a right and wrong way to set goals? When your goals are not reaping benefits, something is missing or lacking in your approach. Whereas if you set goals the right way, your productivity could reach the sky.

Set goals that are S.M.A.R.T. — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound. These goals would bring a solid structure to your work life and prepare you for what’s in store for you today.

3. Keep mornings for MITs — Most important tasks

Mark Twain once said, “Eat a live frog every morning and nothing worse will happen to you for the rest of the day.” His point is to tackle the most important task as the first thing in the morning. And, if you have two or more frogs to eat, eat the biggest one first. Time management and prioritisation both go hand in hand. You can manage your time effectively only when you know what is supposed to be done when. The point is to take up a hard or time-consuming task, accomplish it, and focus on other things.

4. Discover your zone

You must have noticed that at specific hours you are as focused as an eagle and your productivity shoots up like anything. It happens when your mind is in complete harmony with the external conditions. Some call it ‘flow’ while others refer to it as their ‘zone’.

Discovering your flow or zone can directly contribute to the right utilization of your time. It helps you reach an optimal state of consciousness when you feel and perform your best.

5. Block distractions — Get them out of your life

Emails, phone calls, and social media messages are some of the common yet biggest distractions at the workplace. So much so, that you end up wasting 759 hours each year due to workplace distractions. All thanks to these distractions that a task that requires 60 minutes takes more than 3 hours to be accomplished.

Whenever you are working on high-priority tasks, put that phone in silent mode and turning data off. You would end up saving a lot of time and take your efficiency levels a notch higher.

6. Find a good time tracking software -

One of the easiest ways to keep track of every minute being spent at work is by employing a time management software. These time tracking software is designed to set time estimates, track time spent on tasks, and maintain a record of every minute you spend while working on tasks.

For example, if you are working on a project, you can set a time estimate for each task and subtask to manage your time efficiently. You can try time management software like ProofHub to manage your projects and time efficiently.

About ProofHub’s Time Tracking Feature:

ProofHub is one solution to tracking time for effective time management. It is a time tracking software that will bring all your time data in one place. What can you do?

• Add timesheets

Multiple timesheets can be added to record time data, which can be used for payroll, client billing, tracking, and even time management.

• Set time estimates

When you set time estimates, it is a good way to time management as you can define how much time it should take to get work done. You’ll have a clear indication if the time taken exceeds the estimated time.

• Track time manually

You can enter taken to get work done and track manually time spent for billable or non-billable hours.

• Track time with multiple timers

Start and pause timers when you switch between what you’re working and save it in timesheets.

7. No multitasking — Quality over quantity

If you pride yourself on juggling too many tasks at once, here’s news for you. Research suggests that only 2% of people can multitask effectively. For the remaining 98% of people, multitasking is actually wasting their time and lessening their overall productivity.

Instead of dividing your attention into three different things, it’s better to focus entirely on one thing and marvel at it. To make it more effective, try timeboxing them. It refers to the act of allocating a time-frame for every task which in return, increases the likelihood of its successful completion.

8. Take small breaks frequently — refresh and rejuvenate

It may sound counterintuitive but breaks are one of the effective time management strategies. How? Let’s assume two scenarios. In the first scenario, picture a team member working on a task for 5–7 hours at a stretch. And, another team member is working on the same task with frequent small breaks. Who do you think is using his time effectively? Of course, the later.

Smart time management isn’t always about doing something or the other. It also emphasises on the fact that little breaks after an hour or so can take your productivity to another level.

9. Find inspiration — quotes, videos, audiobooks

Following a to-do list or a specific pattern can be boring. It’s hard to concentrate at work when you aren’t fully motivated. Instead of wasting that time doing something unproductive, utilise it to inspire yourself.

Tape those cliched time-management quotes around your desk. Watch motivational or TEDx videos or listen to audiobooks talking about time management tips at work. Or, just go for a small walk.

We are familiar with the procrastination phenomena in which you either do nothing at all or engage in useless activities. The chronic procrastinators get an unusual high in putting important things for later and when it is too late, they start panicking. Don’t let procrastination take over your life and let it become a part of your lifestyle.

The best way to deal with procrastination is to break your work into a number of tasks. It not only makes it doable but also gives you a starting point to begin work. Also, try making detailed timelines that give you an exact idea of deadlines. When you surround yourself with people who take action and crush goals instantly, you automatically imbibe such habits and become more proactive with work.

10. Sleep at least 7–8 hours

Sleep is a detrimental factor that could affect many things both positively and negatively. When you get a sound sleep for six to eight hours, not only you feel fresh and rejuvenated but it also contributes to a healthy lifestyle. On the contrary, when you don’t get enough sleep, you are also increasing disease risks such as diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, obesity, and more.

The human mind and body make better decisions and perform more efficiently when they are well-rested. You can decide quickly what to do when and how. Develop a schedule for your sleep and stick to it every day. Try going to bed and waking up at the same time. There are many applications such as Calm, Sleep Cycle that tracks your sleeping patterns, help you get a sound sleep, and wakes you up as a more focused individual.

11. Do less but impactful

It’s never a good idea to take up more than you can handle. High achievers and great performers all over the world do less but better. When you prioritize tasks, it gives you clarity and direction so that you can start working on things, save time, and be more productive.

The next time you find it difficult to manage time, take a deep breath and take up a single task, complete it, and start another without stressing yourself too much.

12. Use an online calendar

One of the greatest time management tips for managers is to start using an online calendar. Long before, calendars have been used as a fundamental tool to manage time. With the advent of online calendars, one can easily manage his/her schedule, mark important dates and events, set up reminders, create time blocks, and whatnot.

The best part is that online calendars can be integrated with third-party applications and can be accessed from multiple devices. There are plenty of options to choose from such as Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, Apple Calendar

Are you a new mum returning to the workforce?

Returning to work after maternity leave is a daunting task for every woman.

Some are lucky enough to return to their former positions while others may have gone on an extended leave. Hence, the need to join the Labour market once again. Lots of women experience what I'll call the return-to-work syndrome. A lot of us experience fear, worry, loss of confidence, shame, and trepidation while returning to work. All these come from the fact that we are not up-to-date with today's relevant work skills, worried that their old skills, if still relevant, have become rusty due to long periods of inactivity, low pay, and many other factors. Below are tips to get started again.

It feels like you're hitting a brick wall. Worry less.

YOUR MINDSET

There are a lot of things you need to keep in mind while rejoining the workforce.

1. Be prepared both mentally and physically

Are you ready for this? Motherhood is pretty much a challenging task. Being a working mother is even more challenging. Well, that doesn't mean that it is something you cannot do. Prepare yourself both for work and the job search.

2. Don’t aim for the top straight away

The labor market is currently congested. Being with a child makes it harder to be hired even. Well, that doesn't mean you won't be hired. Hence you should bear in mind that you may not return to the same level you were before motherhood. If you have not gotten time to learn some new skills during the leave, you may have to take up a role that you are not used to. Well, you should start from somewhere and gradually climb your career ladder. You will get them with time.

3. Think about the new skills you've gained while raising a child

Skills such as negotiation responsibility and balanced multitasking skills will look good on your resume.

4. Finally: Be confident.

Try as much as you can to not get frustrated. Endeavour to remain positive always. Take a deep breath and smile. You've got this.

Notify your network

The first best step in all job searches is informing your network. They may not have an opportunity, but they may know someone who does and, in some cases, even recommend you to them. Let your family, friends, LinkedIn network, former colleagues, and even acquaintances know that you are ready for work and, while at that, get your resume ready.

Update your CV

This can be said to be the best thing to do. Your old resume/CV might be outdated by now already, even though it got you that great job before motherhood. Update your resume with the latest skills and keep the old ones there as well. Impressivecv.com is your place to go to to get your resume or CV impressive and get to your most recent job.

  Take classes

There are many advancements in the world, and many must have happened while you are out of work. Hence, you should take more courses. Brush up your old skills and add new ones. It may be hard for you to attend classes, but there are many online classes that you should be taking. While some are free, others are not. Whichever one works for you, try and take it as it is essential to keep up-to-date on the latest industry's best practices.

Create a pitch

When you start looking for a job, you should be able to speak to everyone you meet or get to know again, why you are back at work, and what you hope to find in a job. Practice your 30-second pitch to make it natural. Do not hide the fact that you have been on a long break and project a positive attitude towards your situation.

Finding a job is rarely easy and an even greater challenge for professionals who have not been in the field for a long time.

It may take some time to find a suitable position when you return to work after a long break. When you get discouraged, think about all of your positive points: education, experience, general skills, and determination. With time, patience, and perseverance, the perfect work will come your way.

Feeling a little overwhelmed or lost in preparing your CV to seek employment again? Drop me an email at info@impressivecv.com. It would be a pleasure to assist you!