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Good CV Preparation

An impressive job description doesn't necessarily mean you're good at what you do. Far more meaningful is a substantial record of personal achievements.

Shortly after Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon, one commentator said of the impact Ford had made: 'A year ago, he was unknown throughout America, now he's unknown throughout the world.'

You may also have heard the Woody Allen line that 90% of success at work is about turning up. Perhaps that was true a while back, but these days that attitude won't achieve survival, let alone success.

Potential employers are interested in what you actually do and (more critically) what difference you actually make rather than in what you're supposed to do. A CV that simply sets out a mini job description for all the roles you've held is therefore missing a trick.

CVs have become increasingly achievement oriented in recent years. An achievementbased CV will give a potential employer a clear idea of the impact that you might have if recruited.

If you're planning to enter the job market in the near future you therefore need to be able to build into your CV an impressive set of achievements. By and large, though, we're pretty crap at recording our personal corporate triumphs. We tend to be a bit like one of those plucky British chaps in classic war movies who saves the entire regiment and then says in all modesty that he was only doing his job and there's no need to make a fuss as he still has one perfectly good leg left. In a similar way, we often don't give ourselves credit for the skills and abilities we have built up over the years and instead take them for granted.

Here's a quick exercise to help you see how good you are at recognising your achievements:

Write down thirty or so achievements that you're really proud of. If listing thirty achievements sounds excessive, please persevere. There's a tendency for people to do this exercise on automatic pilot to begin with. By the time you're up to achievement 23, you'll start surprising yourself with all you've done that had slipped from immediate recollection.
Alongside each achievement, make a note of the underlying skills or abilities you drew on in order to succeed. Armed with the output from this exercise, you should get a pretty good idea of the skills and abilities you can take into the job marketplace.

Bear in mind that achievements are contextual; in other words, our work environment and the corporate culture that we're part of shape what's expected of us and what's possible for us to achieve. For example, you may have the capacity to be innovative yet work in an environment that's unsupportive of innovation, such as a risk-averse life assurance company. You may therefore struggle to come up with a work-based example of being innovative. Where this is the case and where you're putting yourself forward for a role that requires innovative thinking, you may need to provide an achievement that drew on innovation from either a previous role or from a non-work situation. It's perfectly legitimate to use such examples in your CV.

The downside with achievements is that - like much of your CV - they have a shelf life. A genuine achievement that goes back ten years or more won't carry as much of an impact as a more recent example will. I'm reminded of a quote that was allegedly printed on clothing worn by Britney Spears: 'I'm a virgin, but this is an old T-shirt.' But come what may, you'll need a demonstrable record of achievements in order to achieve your career ambitions. Without it, your marketability will plummet.


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