Monthly Archives: September 2020

CV Tips, Project management CV

Project Management CV profile – selling yourself for new roles

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The profile is an important part of your CV, an introduction to you as a project professional – ideally it should summarise you and what you actually do. However it is often an area on the CV which lacks any real impact, circling around expected skills such as being positive, dynamic, organising, good time keeping etc – as I said “expected skills” well they are, I would hope you have good organisation and a positive approach to your work in every job across the land. Focusing on core areas such as planning, change, business cases, strategy, project capability etc are what you need to be talking about, however, to start make sure you describe who you are. You may be a PM but your job titles don’t align so here is a good area to make sure you tell the reviewer what it is you do. Next think about the types of projects you manage, the environments you work in, the types of teams you work with and any technical competencies you have whether it be technology or methodologies. Then think about what your specialism or niche might be, such as implementing frameworks, dealing with difficult stakeholders, picking up part run projects (maybe they are failing etc) and overcoming cultural issues.

profile

Once you have a short paragraph, read through it and see if this is a fair description of you as a professional, some call this an elevator pitch. By providing a strong descriptive profile you will stop calls from recruiters for roles that are inappropriate and increase calls from recruiters with roles that are a good match for you. It pays to spend some time getting the profile right as you need to create a good impression from the start of the CV, it speaks volumes if you can’t summarise what you do, how can anyone else?

CV Tips, CV Writing, PMO CV, Project management CV

Putting skills on your Project Management CV

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Skills are an obvious subject to address in your CV, but are you actually writing the right things? We’ve all heard that recruiters keyword search on specific words which are relevant to PM and delivery/support etc, and this is true, however a list of keywords just doesn’t cut it. Anyone can write a good list from a little research which will have your CV come to the top of a search but with no context it is just a list or a word, we can’t actually see where or when you have used the skill. Equally, copying and pasting your job description may look like you’ve made more effort but it is obvious this is what you have done to recruiters and HR professionals, they read bland and generic (and dare I say….Lazy!).

Lists

If you have already created a list then you are half way there to getting some really good pieces of information on the CV, have a think about how you have used the skill, some skills are a daily requirement so you can talk about how you regularly do XYZ and talk about why you do it, if it is a skill you don’t use as regularly but for more specific pieces of work then talk about specifics for using it. You’ll soon have a good list of bullet points which incorporate the keywords but they actually tell a story and make your use of them more realistic to the reviewer. Not rocket science, but an area that a lot of project professionals fail to do with their CVs, placing more focus on the project which in turn makes for a great marketing pitch for the project and/or business but does nothing to sell you and your skill-set.