Time for a CV refresh

If you’ve read my very first post, you’ll know that my first inkling of being made redundant was a vague meeting request that popped into my inbox on a Friday afternoon (I still can’t believe that they did it on a Friday afternoon!). It was so ambiguous and unusual that I knew straight away it was going to be bad news.

My instinct was to get a CV together. It’s one of the first things most people in this situation do, almost a knee jerk reaction. And A couple of hours later, I had a new CV, and I was rather proud of the content, design and speed I’d managed to get it fit and ready for action.

It was though a little thrown together, and looking back it may not have been the best time to produce something that I’d have to rely on for the next few months, and that was key to finding a new job.

It had done me Ok. You could argue it’s not as it hasn’t found me a job, but it produced few tentative calls, and as we live in very weird times, I was happy with that.

But after three months, and telling myself that I need to keep everything fresh, I thought a CV makeover was in order. My options were to either create one myself or throw down some money and get one professionally created. As I’d got a bit of redundancy money in the pot, and it seemed like fair use of it, I went for the later and paid someone to create it for me.

Not tempting fate, but it’s turning out to be the right decision.

Since uploading, I’m getting a lot more attention. Recruiters are calling me, and I’ve already had a couple of interviews. You never know there might be something in all of the talk about CV optimisation and the use of keywords.

Or It could just be that things ‘out there’ are picking up. But my professionally created CV is much better than mine ever was. It sells my skills and represents me a lot more than my first effort ever did. It also looks a lot more like a professional document and creates a much better first impression.

I probably should have done it earlier.

Isn’t hindsight a wonderful thing?