CV Writing: career positioning

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 - CV Writing, Career Management

CV Writing: career positioning

When CV Writing, many think tactically about what goes where and what they should insert/invent to fill out the sections they have created. This approach from the start creates holes in their job application, which even the inexperienced HR administrator or recruiter could pick up on very quickly.

The problem is that the story the job seeker has created doesn’t have consistency. A lack of consistency means gaps, gaps creates doubt, and doubt is sufficient human reason for rejection. All created by thinking about CV Writing structure and filling in the gaps.

With a Professional CV, the same consistency issue can easily create the same problems of rejection. But this confuses the professional job applicants, as they know they have the right combination of skills, qualifications and experiences: so why were they rejected? If they know it is not a failure to communicate their ability to do the job, and that they would fit that companies culture, then the reason often comes down to career positioning.

CV Writing: job interview

Any good CV Writing process should start with a career plan, or at least an idea of where your career is going. As I have said before and will say again, the key job interview question is Why do you want this job or one of its alternates such as Why is this job right for you? At this point you need an answer that makes the employer know that you know this job is right for you. How do you do this?

Firstly, you don’t invent an answer in the interview! Some candidates can, but they can not create the same effect twice in the interviewer across two interviews: consistency checking is hence why there are always two interviews for a professional position. So what you have to do is have a pre-planned answer, that comes form your career plan, or at least from where you know where you want to be next.

CV Writing: career plan

A career plan can be a difficult issue for many, so the way I have found to most easily address the consistency issue is to ask our Professional CV customers to start by thinking about their own Personal Elevator Pitch. During this process, many will come back to me and discover skills they never knew they had, or experiences that they never knew they wanted now to repeat. What this does for them is that the creation of a personal elevator pitch is secondary to them creating consistency in their job application approach: if they hadn’t done the exercise, they would have been rejected.

Most eventually come down to a personal elevator pitch which is a bit too long. In summary, it tries to get too many things in to what is supposed to be a 30second statement.

The reason for this is simply that for most job seekers, there is no ONE ideal next job. For most there are at least four streams of potential employment, and most often more. The client job seeker will then come back to me, and wonder how they kept the consistency in their job application, while allowing for the variances in their job application; while also thinking about how they answer the key interview question.

CV Writing: navigation

If you were the captain or navigator of a ship or an air plane, and I asked you to go form one point to another, you would most likely choose the most direct route. But, shall we say you gained advice that going via an alternate route, you could get to your destination quicker, or avoid a storm, or have a more pleasant journey. Then rightly, you might take that alternate route. Does this mean that you failed the task? No, you got from A to B, so you succeed.

The same is true of career positioning. If you have a clear enough end target or goal in mind, then the course you take to get there is the one most suited to you, the goal you have in mind, and the environment in which you currently find yourself.

There could be a whole number of different jobs which get you to where you want to be, its just a matter of choice. To get consistency in that choice, and to be able to clearly communicate it, you need to define a clear range of positions which would suit a logical and consistent journey to the end target.

Career positioning

If you look back at your career, you most likely started out in a specialist technical skill (eg: engineer, accountant, HR manager, sales, etc), inside an industry (ie: insurance, local government, finance, banking, telecoms). If you are ten or more years into your career, then most likely at some point you have managed some people, either a virtual group inside a project or directly as a line manager.

In career positioning, this gives you three strings:

• Specialist operator skills
• Market sector skills and knowledge
• Managerial skills

The ideal personal elevator pitch says that you are an X in a Y market, eg:

• I am a managerial account inside the insurance sector
• I am a sales manager inside the telecoms sector
• I am an HR manager in Local Government

Any consistent career move should fit along one of these three strings. Modern HR practise in career positioning and planning uses a scaled risk model based on Ansoff’s product market growth matrix, and hence a consistent career position can translate into:

• Managerial account inside the insurance sector: could next move to be an account in a different market, or another managerial post in insurance
• Sales manager inside the telecoms sector: could move next to another sales manager position another market, or another managerial position in telecoms
• HR manager in Local Government: could move into HR management in another market, or a non-HR position in Local Government

All we are using here to create consistency is personal vision/drive (through the personal elevator pitch) and logic of next career move. But we have also opened up the full breadth of what is your next logical career step from one job, to a multitude of logical and explainable opportunities and hence possible consistent outcomes.

The fact you choose that employer finally fits both the logic of the matrix, and that having met them, you and they have social and magnetic fit. It is the best outcome for all, and one that you can now communicate with conviction at your second interview to get you that dream job.

Good Luck!

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