How to Make Your CV An A* CV

hello everybody and welcome for coming to join me today on this Workshop all about CV when I first came up with the idea I was thinking I don't know I was thinking there's lots of talks I wonder if it's actually if people are going to attend so I'm glad some people came U and I'm not here on my own today um but yes my name is Samira Ali and the reason why I'm doing this Workshop is is because I am passionate about opening doors especially getting into Tech and one thing that I've noticed basically being in the field is a lot of the times there's a lot of um myth and also when you talk about something like such a

simple thing as a CV there's a million and one way to do it because I have a different style someone else has a different style um there's lots of good ways to do a CV but there's also lots of wrong information to put in a CV so I've had the opportunity to work in HR in training mentoring and coaching and I've seen like thousands of CV and I've also interviewed and shortlisted like hundreds of people over the years so I thought today I'll come and share a bit of my knowledge and give back to the community so I'm really excited here today to be at bides so we shall start without further Ado just a bit of a

disclaimer normally with this Workshop it takes me over an hour to do but obviously I've only got a 45 minute slot so some things like the the group work I'm going to go over it quite quickly because obviously I don't have like I can't give you all 10 minutes to work together in a group um but everything else will be the same okay we shall start okay so the most common question I always get is what makes an excellent CV okay so from my experience working in hon recruitment the average recruiter takes about six seconds okay literally 6 seconds if you're lucky maybe someone like me might take an extra 10 seconds and if I like something

maybe I'll spend another two seconds but either ways it's a really short time if you're lucky to get human analyzing your CV um and I'll go to ATS later on but in a human eye we're talking about literally just couple of seconds to make an impression it's really important when you have your CV that you organize your information okay make make sure that it's in order don't jumble things up and there's a specific order for things as well so it's really important like for example if you're a graduate the first thing that you have is after your name and obviously your um contact details Etc it's your education first if you're somebody who graduated just recently

okay um however if you haven't recently graduated from University and maybe like me you graduated couple several years uh you would have had some sort of work experience whether that may be in um retail sales Tech you name it basically you need to put your order of the jobs that you've had in chronological order but CU sometimes I see people who graduated um 10 years ago but they'll have their degree at the top that doesn't really make a lot of sense so definitely important to organize information it's really also important that you don't treat your CV like a biography okay it needs to be really short and simple I'd say ideally one page but if you're somebody like me with

over I don't know 14 years in the industry then I keep mine to two pages um because I can't put everything in one page but however if you're somebody whose early careers ideally it should be just one page one A4 page and you've got lots of work experience that you can't condense than just two pages and to save extra space you know sometimes people write references available on request get rid of that if you've got that on your CV get rid of that that's a waste of space you don't need it also it's really important that when you are listing the jobs that you have in your CV and your duties in bullet points describe what is it that you

actually did don't copy and paste your job description that is very very boring um I'm very blunt it's boring don't do that don't don't list that the duties that you did um literally tell us what is it that you actually did um and what are the key achievement in the role and again I've got some examples that I will touch up upon later but definitely just don't copy and paste your job description bring it to life and I'll show you what I mean in a bit okay it's really important that you make it easy on the eye so for all of you that like lots of colors um I I've got news for you unless you're really trying to aim

for a job like I don't know as a digital marketeer or a social media or something in the creative I think it's really safe to say that keep it to one color or two colors Max you know something that matches but not rainbow because that's just a bit distracting um and and all those canvas CVS as much as they look good they're not all ATS friendly and again I'm going to touch up a bit on that later on it's also really important that you proof read um get your CV looked at by your friend your family member anyone else in your community maybe you've got a mentor but really and truly prove read it look at it and get someone else to

also check it because it's easily you can easily miss things and also when it comes down to your CV as well it's important to show off your skills this is not the time to be humble this is not the time to say I'm good at instead of saying I'm good at what stops you from saying I'm excellent at okay uh right now for example there is um CTF capture the flag event going on um obviously there's lots of people participating could it be that you were number three like I don't know you you want like I don't know you were the third person the highest scoring person like the top three again if you did put it down put that down on your CV

but show off your skills it could be even that the only three people did the CTF you know what I'll still put that on there because how do they know I was only one of one I'm not lying I was there was three people that did it and I was one of the top three so I will put that on my CV so again be specific on the information that you tell your CV sorry that you're right in your CV but obviously don't lie I am not condoning lies at all in case okay keep updated copies of your CV um and by that what I mean is as we apply for different jobs different jobs

require different skills and they're asking for different keywords it's really important that you keep your CV always up to date updated and also when you're sending your CV to a recruiter don't put down something along the line of Samir Ali final draft please don't save any of you CV or like samira. 2.1 2.2 literally just your name dot the job that you're applying for um don't over complicate it and by the way I'm going to give opportunities for questions later okay so there will be opportunities for questions um the other thing to remember is keywords it's really really especially with ATS coming and sorry with with ATS being used the last few years and if

anybody doesn't know what I mean by ATS is the automated tracking system ISC it's the applicant tracking system which is what a lot of big companies use to filter out your CV like once upon a time this is a true story I applied for a job I don't know like 11:00 at night as I do and then I got a rejection 5 minutes later literally 5 minutes later I was really you know sad but obviously I got over it and I realized it's because clearly it didn't the the the ATS did not pick up the um the keywords even though I had the keywords is because my CV was PDF so I don't know when some of

you apply have you ever saw a system that's called Greenhouse IO for example Greenhouse IO doesn't like PDFs so I learned that that's a tip so do it in Word document ideally do it in a Word document your CV because as as as because obviously I know I did my CV perfectly but just that Greenhouse IO didn't pick up my PDF so you know what I did I redid I reapplied with a different email did a Word document and then I got invited for an interview so again if you get a rejected ASAP from an ATS system think what have I done wrong okay what is it and then see if you can send it

again and definitely experiment with it okay okay so this is one of the group activities that I do for a lot of my um clients but I'm not going to do that right now because a all of you are seeing apart from each other and B we don't have I'm under time so I will move on but this is just I just want to give you this so I'm going to talk through this so this is a job description a fictional job description and as you can see from this job description right here it's asking for a lot of stuff so when I talk about keywords and what is it that they're looking for when you're applying

for this fictional job it's important for you to match it as much as you can obviously if you don't have the experience I'm not telling you to get it out of thin air but however it's important to think what is it that I'm doing at work what is it that I've done at University what is it that I've done at boot camp I know some of you might have finished boot camp recently okay what are some of those experiences and also as well as focusing on the technical stuff that it's looking for so for example we can see here that it's asking about SQL and um everybody most people should know how to use Exel Excel or if not I'll say go on

YouTube um but definitely look at SQL um and think to yourself okay then they're asking for SQL so if your CV doesn't mention anything about SQL right there and then you already is X against your name and also the soft skills that they're looking for clearly because it's a data role they need somebody who has good attention to detail as well so it's really important that you think okay what is the keyw words that they are looking for they're looking for somebody who is um competent at Excel um somebody with analytical skills so again it's really important that you say whether you've done that at work or in a project or in a volunteering work experience

talk about how is it that you've managed data you know it could be that you're somebody who's working in a volunteer job for example maybe you're working in I don't know let's say a hospice um and every job has some sort of of data you know like how like for example do you ever keep track of how many customers came what did the customers buy that's all data so it's all about how you use your transferable skills okay if any of you have these words on your CV get rid of it AAP delete it okay and sometimes people say to me Samira but why do you have motivated and passionate surely those are really nice

words to have and yes they are nice words to have but what did they mean um somebody might say they're motivated but what does that really mean I mean I'm motivated to go to the gym but if it's raining tomorrow I'm not motivated you know what I can't be bothered I just want to sit at home and drink hot chocolate but guess what I'm not motivated I'm disciplined I go to the gym every day because I have to right cuz I like sweet things and I don't want to gain too much weight so I know motivation is not going to work for me but I go because I'm disciplined so the words that you use on your CV are very

important okay um when somebody writes I'm responsible for you have a job of course you've got responsibility but what else have you got what else have you got out there so again think about those words carefully and um and also when somebody says I just handled or I helped think more about that okay so definitely those words are considered weak um so I would get rid of them ASAP if you have it okay so obviously I told you what makes your C look weak these are words that can make your CV look stronger okay and these are obviously only six words right here but however if you were to Google action verbs um on Google

literally you'll get like hundreds and hundreds of words so look at action verbs look at words that make CV strong Google words that Mak your CV strong and you will get like a whole list of them um but yeah it's definitely that you yeah so achieved initiated all of those that are really really good words but yeah there's like a whole lot of

words I just realized this is not coming out how I wanted it wasn't like that when I checked before I don't know what happened there okay okay cool so I'll read it out um I'm sorry you can't see it properly but number one is how to make your CV ATS proof so number one is don't use use images or graphicss okay so as beautiful as it looks when people put lovely images on your um CV guess what the ATS doesn't like it and the reason I know it is because I worked on the background system in HR when I did in HR information systems but yeah those images they're not ATS friendly um avoid spelling mistakes and avoid using

special characters you know when somebody writes like hash and sometimes the most common mistake I see as well is people will put in their long list of what they did at GitHub like the GitHub link or the LinkedIn link you don't need that if you're going to send out proof of the work that you did do it in a separate document don't add it to your CV um because those special characters the ATS doesn't like it okay so the top four mistakes that I've seen is not adding the role you're applying so on your CV not adding the role that you're applying for right at the top so you've got your name and then what I do is and this worked for me in

the past is I've got my name and then I put down the role that I'm I put down the role that I'm looking for so if a cyber security analyst I'm going to put down cyber security analyst under my name then my contact information just my email and my phone number uh you don't need to put address nobody needs to know your full address and you shouldn't be putting that in the websites anyway so do not put your full address in um and also it's important as well that you add a skill section so when people don't add the skills that they have um so by bullet points either bullet points of the skills that you

have or write sentences sentences about the kind of skills that you have it's really important and um also the other mistake that I've seen is people not highlighting their transferable

skills so again this is something that you can all think about in the background um so in so all of you are obviously looking for different kind of jobs um different job titles um so think about okay make sure that you spend time researching what are the soft skills needed for your industry like exactly so if you want to work in cyber security what are the soft skills okay what are your hard skills by hard skills we mean your technical skills what are hard skills and stuff like that okay soft skills all of us have soft skills um hard skills a lot of companies are willing to teach you and also there's a lot of certifications that you can do

online like for example if you want to learn about Microsoft Azure the path to learn Microsoft Azure it's free okay the only thing that you have to pay for is the exam if you want to get the certification obviously then obviously you have to pay for but if you really want to say that you've got AWS sorry um Azure or AWS experience the pathway to that is free so again you can put something in your CV along the lines of currently studying AWS essential X currently doing Azure currently studying for my a900 exam but obviously when you're asked about that in an interview you need to be able to pack it up to because obviously they're

going to say to you oh okay it says here you've been learning aour can you tell us what is it so again if you are going to write that in your CV make sure that you you can back it up and um make sure but definitely remember to look at your soft skills and your hardcore skills and always look at your keywords so it's important that you research okay so this is a simple CV template um if all of you want a copy of that later on um you're welcome to add me on LinkedIn and I can send it to you um okay cool but yeah so first things first is just to keep it so again I like

to keep my CV nice black and white just just just how I like it but obviously if you wanted to add a little bit of color no harm in that okay okay so name and then what I do here is the part where I talk to talk to all of you about the job title so the job title that I'm applying for so my name the job title that I'm applying for my mobile number and um location email okay and then obviously some people add LinkedIn in I don't bother I I don't see any point of adding LinkedIn on there but okay and then from there on I always think definitely put down a professional summary and the

mistake that I always see is people put down like a long paragraph gra it almost looks like an essay please don't do that I think like two sentences or like maybe just a small short paragraph is more than enough something that captures our attention so something nice simple that tells me what is it that you are looking for and also in your professional summary be specific don't write something along the line of oh looking to work in a progressive company or getting to get into my first tech job what First Tech job are you looking for are you looking for first line support are you looking for cyber security analyst role are you looking for a first

GRC role be specific okay and the area of expertise this is the place where you show off your skills soft skills and hard skills okay and your work experience again bullet points please whatever you do put your experience in bullet points the only time I say don't put your experience in bullet point is when you um only time I say don't put your experience in bullet point is when you've let's just say you've done two three jobs that are similar okay and then the last job that you're doing that's similar just a sentence is more than enough or if you did a job like I don't know 10 years ago we don't need to know all the things that you did again

you can just keep it bullet pointed or just one long sentence that's more than enough but relevant information first that's the rule of okay your education and again with the education sector the only time this education sector should be before work experience is if you're somebody who's a recent gradu graduate and people ask me what do we mean by recent graduate I would say Max a year two Max within the within the last two years if you graduated more than the last two years your graduate shouldn't be at the top okay it should always be work experience and this is another question I always get asked as well I get asked oh I've had a gap and obviously life

happens recruiters don't mind you having a gap on your CV but what we do mind is you having a gap and not telling us why you have the Gap like for example I took time out when I had my kids I took time out from work because I was the main caregiver and in my CV I didn't hide it I just wrote Korea leave as I was um career leave as I was bringing up uh my kids or or maternity leave and then what I did is I wrote the things that I did so for example during my maternity leave I'm somebody who likes to keep busy so what I did is I joined the PTA I was at

the school fundraising for the school the school loved me cuz I raised a lot of money just make keeping myself busy um but yes again like what so again I've learned fundraising skills I've learned um I was a trustee at the school so again if you took time off from work or let's just say you were looking after a sick relative obviously you're not if you were looking after a sick relative you're not going to have a lot of spare time but again just put down took time off to look after an elderly relative life happens to all of us and if someone's going to discriminate against us because life happened to us and um then now they don't want to

employ us you know what do I do you even really want to work for that place but yeah there's nothing definitely if you've got a gap don't hide it and say what the Gap was for okay okay so I'm just going to show you now just a quick CV as well here just something to highlight so this is somebody's for who was looking for an IT support role um again I made this up and you you can see here that obviously they wrote a that personal statement so they wrote that they what they're doing they looking for IT service desk and they've got customer service skills so whatever skills that you have it's really important that you highlight those

because customer service skills are foundation for it support what do it support people do they talk to people and they're solving problems all the day so again that's something that I would highlight for their skill this person right here what they did is they obviously talked about the fact that they've got excellent customer service skills they talked about um their problem solving skills and at least they brought down their key skills in bullet points so key skills is always important and then when they're talking about their job they wrote down the things that obviously that they are doing and again things like you know achieved we talked about that's a strong word developed another strong word for ucv is

something along the lines of streamlined um gained proficient so again all of those words think about how you're going to put it down when you do do it okay this is another job that they've had and again they've talked about how they demonstrate so again it says provided you've got provided as a first line starter here you got demonstrated and then communicated so again the more strong words you use the better it is for you okay and then again they again um another old mistake I always see is well another thing that I always notice as well is people when it comes to interest they write lots of some people write like a paragraph about it you don't need

to I think with your interest it should take the least amount of space interest and hobbies should take the least amount of space in your um CV and the reason why is I we've never recruited anyone just because they had an interesting hobby so that should be the bit where you spend the least bit on so again if you're like for me I just put down something I with my hobbies I just put down bullet points podcasting I just put down traveling cooking so again something nice and simple this is just an example of how somebody did their um opening summary so you know we do your profile summary how they did it um so again it just needs to be nice and

short and simple obviously if you understand you've got some technical skills again just put down what it is so this person mentions TCP DNS DHCP that they understand that but obviously with this statement right here I'll make sure that I align it with the job description that so what is the job description looking for that's what I would do I would make sure okay make sure your opening statement reflect so if they say looking for highly energetic and dynamic person trust me they'll be energetic and dynamic in my in my summary so again you you want to match it and also if they're looking for SQL and dat for example it was a data analyst role I I'll put down

instead of TCP IP DNS of course I'll have SQL I'll put down powerbi I'll put down pivot table you name it so again you need to make sure that you um as much as possible now I forgot my word but yeah you need to copy it kind of thing copy it but obviously with intention and copy it because you are able to demonstrate it not copy it for the sake of copying it because what you don't want to do is you don't want to get asked in an interview and you don't know how to answer it okay so I know there's a lot of people who would like to um obviously transition and even like you know um so

different people come from different work experience so sometime I get students I get people who worked in different Industries and they talk about they don't know how to show off their transferable skills so what I did right here for all of you is I've got a list of transferable skills um so let's just say this is an example of somebody who worked as a waiter bwing employee and so again you don't want to say oh surfed C what's it called safed custo surfed customers they drink and beverages cleaned tables you want to go above and beyond okay so it's all about the words that you use so what I wrote here is obviously customer service Excellence

demonstrated strong interpersonal skills by providing exceptional service to diverse clientele if we're going to work in restaurants it's very diverse environment so again it's very important that you put that down and you wrot and also you working in customer service there's a lot of problems so we're really good at problem solving okay technical proficiency right here is if you used a till that's still technical you can put that down in your CV using a till to operate um using a cash system the credit card system that's all technical stuff so again I just changed it to managed point of sale systems and other whatever if there obviously if there's any bar technology other ones that that

you used of course you put in there and again so um and also time management so it's really really important I'm not going to read each and every one of those out but this is how you put your transferable skills so it's all about the words that you use and how you position yourself cuz sometimes I'll get somebody who worked in um retail and they just put down served customers um cleared stock again it's like very simple and stuff but you need to think okay what what but you're not showing off so show off your skills what you've done don't undersell yourself working in customer service is really hard so definitely show it off okay this is another one for

somebody who just works as a volunteer admin administrator so one important thing is that when you [Music] um so when you are actually going and thinking about okay my experience and things like that it's really important that you quantify your results numbers are really really important so with this one you will notice that I put down something along the lines of um you got increased productivity by 25% so all of us at our job we either saved time or we saved our company money or we made money for our company so that's how you have to see okay break it down and when you break it down quantify those into percentages into results okay could it

be that you worked in a call center and you took 200 calls every day I don't know so again make sure you quantify the um quantify the job that you did okay don't just write worked in customer services picking up customer calls that's it how many calls did you pick up so again quantify those results those that data is very important and it will really help you in your CV because obviously we want to stand [Laughter] out okay um so the most common question question I always get asked is can I use generative AI to with my CV of course yes why not definitely use um generative AI um obviously you've got the common one C gbt and then co-pilot and Germany

but and I'm going to say a big butt okay yes you can use it but also be careful when you are using it okay and it's really important that when you use cat gbt or any of those generative AI don't just copy and past taste what it gives you because guess what it sounds really robotic and a recruiter will know so it's really important that you customize it you edit it okay what I do is I'll put down a question to chat gbt Germany and co-pilot and guess what I use all of it combine and contrast add my own spin to it boom send success so again you need to be able to utilize the system by

making sure that you edit you're customizing it and that it sounds natural to you okay don't and also re-edit it edit like you know there's a bit where it always says do you customize regenerate do that really really important that you do that just don't copy and paste it's not going to end well that's my word of warning okay so these are just some prompts and I'm going to go just quickly just through each prompt and stuff um so the first one is somebody just gives let's just say generative AI they just said to them write me a resume based on this job description and then they copy and paste and they bought the job description okay I personally

wouldn't do the first one but I did that for all of you just to give you an example okay that's not very specific when you are going to um utilize the aric the generative AI you have to be very specific okay because literally if you just say write me a resume job title job description it's going to be very generic okay second part write a resume based on this job title position company and it says include bullet point of achievement that show impact and Matrix that's much better as well now because at least you're asking it to be more specific but my favorite one is the third one so with generative AI you have to have to be very specific with the

prompt that you're giving okay so this is the one I would use for example write me a tailored resume for this title at this company don't include an objective statement or references but include a professional summary my past 10 years of work experience and I would say my past experience in HR with three to five bullet points per role and incorporate the most com important keywords from the job description so again if if you're going to use generative AI make sure you're using like the third one that I mean this example at the bottom more and make it specific to you okay what is it that you're highlighting what is it that you want to show off and what is it that

you want so again be very specific with it and then once it gives you the answers make sure you go edit it edit it again re-edit it make it sound natural and then you'll you're good to go and also when you are going to um send it make sure you just don't do copy and paste you have to do copy plain text and then take it out from there obviously otherwise it picks up okay it's really important also like and again a lot of people get upset with me when I say this but it's important that you know you don't just use the same CV to apply with every single job once upon a time when the industry was a lot more

welcoming in the 2020 2021 you could pray and spray and you get lots of reply now they're not they're very very um specific so it's really important that you edit and customize your CV yes it's a lot of work yes it's annoying but please make sure you customize your CV for each application I cannot stress stress that enough okay and more than anything the job hunt is really hard I know it's rough out there um there'll be times where you might not hear back you get rejected like I did 5 minutes after submitting a CV but please don't take it personally it's not you it's them okay I promise um but no keep re editing keep reapplying and just

remember that if somebody says no to you it just means no for now but it actually means next opportunity so make sure you go go for that and that brings us to the end any questions okay go ahead

is just graduated

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oh you got you got mic then everybody can hear youo so let's say like you work in real estate then you graduate and you move to a different country and then you get a minimum wage job should you put that minimum wage job on your application or should you just say that you were graduated and are looking for another job okay do that make sense I I I think with that that's a really good question I think with every job that you do okay if you don't okay so two things if you don't put down down that minimum job what would you say you're doing just currently looking for a job it just shows that you're unemployed whereas for

me as a hiring manager I'd rather know what somebody did and remember the example that I talked about before um let me go back about the person who worked as a waiter for example a waiter that's a minimum wage job right um but you saw how they highlighted their key skills and their transferable skills so the fact that you got minimum wage job and you graduate it still at Le is showing me as a recruiter that you're actually working and it's about how you position yourself so did you see the one before where we talked about um so look so somebody who worked as a waiter a bar employee they still even though it's a

minimum wage job they still do all of these things daily and and then this is what they've added on their CV and it's showing me that they're working obviously yes if you were to not tell us about your minimum wage job nothing's going to go wrong you don't have it's not like you're lying we just don't know about it so again that's up to you if you want to do that but just ask yourself why am I doing that and when you say you graduated and you changed countries sorry and you moved countries how long ago graduation is it is it like 5 years graduated is or is it like one year ago that you graduated so again

each case is different so I don't think it's one of those answers where I can say to all of you just one answer it all depends on your circumstances if you graduated a year ago no harm okay but if it's like four five years ago and then you came here and then you've had a minimum wage job um but you're still looking for a job I would use that minimum wage job to show off the work that I'm doing the great work that I'm doing and the way that and also you can add in the technical skills that you're studying because obviously let's just say you want to get into cyber and you're doing a minimum wage job you're

still obviously studying you're watching YouTube channels maybe you're doing certifications on the side so again I would highlight that on my key skills okay but obviously if you want to hide it it's all good it's up to you yeah so it's not going to like work is a disadvantage for people that are like prejudiced they're like oh that job scene is lesser so no no not at all I mean a good recruiter wouldn't discriminate against somebody I mean and especially in the tech industry there's a lot of people coming from all kind of backgrounds from different jobs those are all um skills that are needed they're fresh skills so definitely and it shows that you're hard working cool

thank you you're welcome

hi um hi just two questions um where would we write what CICS we're doing um where would we position that on our CV and the second question is where would we put that boot camp experience if any we had any okay sure so I'll go with the first one so with the boot camp experience I'll answer the second question first so with the boot camp experience that you've had um I would put down underwork experience so I'll put down I don't know let's just say you were you did a cyber security boot camp I'll put down cyber security trainee and then I will list out the duties because cyber security correct me if I'm wrong

that the boot camps they're about 12 weeks that's 3 months worth of experience so I will definitely put that down under the work experience section and with your certifications I'll put it under Education and Training but also um I but I would highlight like if you've got like a a coma Security Plus or it could be that you've got com A+ and stuff like that I'll make sure I'll also add it in my technical skills so so as a recruiter I'm not going all the way down looking for it so I'll highlight it in my key skills as well okay cool anyone else I think there's some people there okay yes uh what about voluntary work uh

you touched upon you touched on it for for a brief second but uh where where would you put voluntary work on your CV and how important is it okay so volunteer work where did you put it on your CV yes so vol work definitely very important um I mean when I was um obviously like I said when I took time off to look after my children I volunteered at the local school and what I did that I buil my volunteer work experience in my work experience section so literally that was the last thing I did so I wrote I was a trustee I wrote I did fundraising I went and asked for donations from the local business and I

listed out my duties and I put that down under my work experience section because I obviously I did put so what I did is career break so I did career break and then so I did the career break and then I said this is what I did and then underneath it so they saw that I was doing things but definitely under work experience yeah cool I think we've got C some here some hi Samir hi um so my question is um if well for example in my case I um started working in the cyber security field and then did a degree just graduated so I've sort of just graduated but I've also got experience because I started

before my degree so should I start off my CV with the education at the top or not okay so did you just graduate now like this year well 20123 technically okay 2023 okay and but you've got also cyber security experience as well yeah so around four years okay oh definitely I'd put the cyber security experience because that's like gold definitely put cyber security experience and then obviously with your education I um what's it called you know on your education part obviously you just put down graduate and the date that you did so is that is that a master's or a degree now so that's a that was a bachelor's a bachelor's okay yeah yeah no definitely I would say experience

first because you've got that amazing experience and then obviously um you can and then obviously you can just write down as well to say that obviously um recently completed um recent completed my um degree but definitely and they'll see that by looking at your CV but I think experience first for you excellent thank you yeah we've got one here as well and one there so he will come to you as well so but over there first he's waiting yeah thanks for your patient thank you sair that was a great presentation thank you I I noted one uh point one of the slides about having to update uh your CV every night then for every application you apply for would it

be as really emphasized on it would it be just a question a question would it be able to be more efficient to have uh maybe a standardized template of your CD specifying uh that befits specifying certain specific rules that you look forward to when you for uh those rules uh so that uh the AP systems are able to pick them up when you submit your application um you really have to keep updating your C every time you applying for different rules you're applying for that that's a good question but definitely I think with each role that you apply for you have to look at the job description unless they are exactly identical then obviously you don't need

to I'll give you an example where you don't have to update ucv all the time for um if you all look at the civil services um for example look at the Civil Service website a lot of their jobs that especially when it comes to the cyber security roles if it's a cyber security analyst it could be for the Department for trade it could be one for the cabinet office if you look for the cyber security analyst role a lot of them are very similar so let's just say for example I went through with one CV I got an interview for with it and stuff like that then obviously the next time I apply with the other departments and

stuff you've already got a winning CV that because with um like civil services they also tell you to fill out an application form so then you can keep your CV the same because obviously you it's a cybercity analyst role that you're applying for but otherwise if you're applying for different companies every job description is going to have a different um set of requirement or a different set of key skills that they want to prioritize or a specific unicorn and I say a unicorn because they're all looking for someone different um so again it's really important that you just read that job description and you obviously make sure your CV is as close as possible with those keywords but

obviously if it's the same keywords of the same job description with the other one then you don't have to change it but it's the general rule is obviously whatever company you have just look at the job description and just update your CV I know it's a pain but it has to be done okay cool and we got one more question here please yeah let's look at the time sorry we're running out of time um I'm going to be around here so if anybody wants to chat to me afterwards because I have to clear the stage before they um clear my mic so I'll give one more question gone thanks um I've got 35 years worth of it and cyber security

experience I've got 11 certifications I've just completed six years at Tesco I've going through applying for 750 roles and I've had three interviews uh two interviews two phone interviews so I'm what I'm trying to figure out is if I'm going to customize a CV for every single role I do I'm going to spend hours and hours and hours per submission and I'm going to miss out on a load of potential roles that I could be ideal for but I'm but the the what I'm currently doing is I'm just sing a sended CV with three pages with like pretty much as your template is with all the key skills and all the certifications but either they they're

just not getting through all the the recruiters are just seeing you know they've got 300 CVS and they've just picked three out of the first 50 or something or you know they've skimmed the ones that they need and you know I'm still sa to yeah no I really empathize is really hard 750 applications you've sent out and only two interviews honestly I empathize and I understand again this is what I said in my presentation I know it's a pain having to tailor your CV for every single job but the industry has changed I've got I've got 14 years experience doing my field right and once upon a time I could send my CV put it on indeed

put it on CV library and I used to be inated by calls not anymore now they're being really rough out there and the way that we have to obviously overcome it or the way I find myself overcoming it is and what I found successes in is when I've tailored each job okay H CV but because I've been doing it so so long now I it literally just takes me a couple of like minutes to do each one um and then obviously I utilize chat gbt um gemin and co-pilot like I said I literally see what they all tell me and then I customize into my own part which again is a lot of work and stuff like

that but however it's just with all the ATS and all the recruiters out there now they're all being very picky because it's not a candidate Market anymore and I don't know when it's going to change back I hope you know but I think for now we just have to persevere but definitely I know you said you don't want to obviously do that and again I'm not telling you to tailor ucv you have to do what works for you best but that's how I found it worked for me I hope all I wish you all the best though thanks I mean the current model is not working so I do need to do something different definitely I think give it a go and let

me know if you do send me a LinkedIn and let me know but and if any of you add me on LinkedIn I will send you I've got a couple of resources that I wanted to share with you um sorry let me just quickly do this before they cut my mic off for me so so so this is the bit about anybody who's got any um anybody who's got any gaps in their CV feel free to screenshot that but I can also email it to you but just to say how you got gaps and I think there was one more person who had a question over there was it you over there at the back

that's it yeah oh is it okay oh sorry I get told no more question time now but I'm going to be here so you can come and talk to me I'm I'm going to be around okay thank you everybody for listening thank you