We see hundreds of CVs daily from international candidates in different fields, levels and from different parts of the world, with the collective experience of our in-house recruitment team, we can tell you one common denominator among the CVs, lots of them need an upgrade considering the nature and level of jobs the candidates are after. We will tell you tips that will help you upgrade your CV to an international level, and you can also download our approved template at the end of this article. Because we care that you secure international jobs this season, and this is how we are encouraging you to do, in addition to bringing you the latest international vacancies from different parts of the world that are either visa sponsoring or fully remote.
WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
Because whether you're applying for visa sponsorship jobs or remote jobs, there are 50 other people from 50 other countries vying for the same positions, so you must make a good impression with your application, and having a professionally put-together CV is a good way to make such an impression. It may have been acceptable by local recruiters in your home country to have a BASIC cv, but it is definitely not acceptable by international recruiters. As you may know, in addition to physically assessing your CV, most recruiters utilize automated tools that help make their jobs easy and effective, chief among these tools is what is called Applicant Tracking System (ATS) - these are human resources information systems that are utilized by recruiters to manage recruitment. What makes this ATS tool interesting is in the way it works and utilized by recruiters, often screening different aspects of the candidates profile against defined criteria and allocating points to each aspect, including the CV. This is why most people fuss about ATS compliant CVs, that is, CVs that are ATS friendly and score high when screened.
Before, we proceed, we will like to remind you that Visa Jobs Hq is the only job board in the world that curates and advertises international jobs that sponsor work visas for international candidates to work in Canada, US, UK, Europe, Middle East and Asia. In addition, we also publish remote/work from home jobs that are open to candidates from all over the globe. We publish hundreds of these vacancies weekly, to bring them to your finger tips because we aim to make international talent mobility an easy thing, you should easily move to where your skills are highly demanded and paid for. This is also why we charge a premium of £14.99 a year to support our team to keep doing the awesome job that they do, and to make our platform exclusive to members only. So if you're in search of jobs that will either sponsor your work visa to migrate to your dream country or you're in search of jobs that you can do from the comfort of your home, then this is the place to do. Subscribe to a membership plan today to begin your journey if you haven't.
Now to the tips.
1. THE HEADER SECTION:
The header is the top section of your CV that usually contains your name and contact details
ADD YOUR PROFESSIONAL TITLE: Add your professional title just under your name. Your professional title helps the recruiter or system easily identify your area of specialty. The issue is that most people do not know their professional title or do not have one single title, considering that they have multiple areas of expertise, well, if you're one of such people, then you should use the one that is important or critical to the job you wish to apply using the CV. So just after your name, and in bold letters, same font size as your name, your CV header should read *PROFESSIONAL ACCOUNTANT*, *DATA ANALYST*, *DIGITAL MARKETER*, *FRONT END SOFTWARE ENGINEER*, *CONTENT WRITER/CREATOR*, etc etc. You get it.
LOCATION: This is a dicey one and you should pay attention to it. So in most cases, your current location may work against you, especially when you're applying to international jobs. Some recruiters have a bias against hiring from certain locations or regions, so this may affect your application from the start. It therefore safe to remove your location information from your CV header. Yes, impress us first with your skillset and experience, and we'd get to the subject of where you are located later down the recruitment process, it might be too late to go back then, because you are just the best candidate for the job. So, get rid of your house address and postcode, except you're applying to jobs in the same city/location as yourself.
CONTACT INFORMATION: Ensure you cross-check, double-check and triple-check that you provide the accurate and updated versions of your contact information. If you must include your mobile number (this is not necessary because email is enough), then add the international country code to it, however, this will also give up your location right off the bat. So email alone will suffice. Please, do not use sexybitch@gmail.com or 69crazyguy@yahoo.com as your email.
2. YOUR PROFILE SECTION:
It is not necessary to have a bio/profile section, but it helps to summarize your professional profile. So one can get an idea of your professional profile by reading your CV header and bio, without having to go down to experiences or skills or education.
Please do not write baseless grammar of seven (7) lines in your bio section. Go straight to the point and introduce three (3) key things;
Who you are: A 5years experienced Data Scientist with extensive experience in Data Modelling, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing in the consumer retail industry. A Professional Accountant with 4years of practice experience majoring in international tax management within the oil and gas sector. A top performing human resources professional with 8 years experience delivering value-oriented HR generalist services within the startup and tech space. These are just examples of how to introduce yourself in a sentence.
What skills you have: I am highly skilled in formulating data models using modern regression technics, training algorithms on multiple datasets and sources using tools like Python, R, and cloud tools like AWS and Azure. I am skilled in sourcing, recruiting and on-boarding candidates within the technical and IT space, using conventional recruitment tools and ATS; I am highly practiced in all SEO techniques like backlinking, analytics and meta tags;
What your goal is: Having spent the last 5 years as a C-Level Digital Marketing Executive, I currently seek decision-making management opportunities within Digital Marketing, Marketing and Communications within a global company. I seek entry-level Data Science roles. With diverse HR experience within 3 international companies, I currently seek Management HR roles within a multinational, where I can contribute immensely and my talents will be rewarded.
Now, let's put them together, and you can see what a professional profile looks like, using one of the examples above.
A 5years Data Scientist with extensive experience in data modelling, Machine Learning and Natural language processing within the consumer retail space. I am highly skilled in formulating data models using modern regression technics, training algorithms on multiples datasets and sources using tools like Python, R, and AWS. I currently on the look out for exciting Big Data, Machine Learning, or Data Science roles within the consumer retail space.
Boom, you see it? It talks about who he/she is, how many years of experience they have, what skills they possess, what industry they have worked in, and what they are looking for, all in three (3) sentences. No need for long paragraphs epistles. This is how a bio/profile should be formulated, should you choose to have one. Now go on and formulate yours and bask in the euphoria of your *professionalness*.
3. EXPERIENCE SECTION:
There is this convention of listing responsibilities associated with experiences. We are here to tell you that this is very basic, and the whole point of this article is to get you to not have a basic CV. Your recruiter already knows what a Professional Accountant does, or what a Digital Marketer does, or what a Civil Engineer does, why not wow them instead? Talk about projects that you undertook or specific achievements you had on the job. Do not spend 7 lines describing your responsibilities as a Logistics Manager, what did you achieve? What made your role different? Those are the details that make your CV standout.
Within my capacity as the Group HR Manager, between Jan 2019 and Dec 2020, I conceived, developed and implemented the Group HRIS system across the 5 branches of the business in 3 countries/regions. This project was aimed at integrating the group's HR functions and making team collaboration more effective and seamless at the group level. The project was bla bla bla
My time as the International Tax Manager saw the company save an estimated $6,000,000 in international tax avoidance within its 3 regions, between 2016 and 2019. This was achieved by liaising with tax consultants, coordinating the in-house team at the different regions, identifying and taking advantage of loopholes within the tax laws of the different regions and reporting as at when due using conventional reporting methods....bla bla bla
This is what your experience section should contain. Please do not spend time listing baseless and pointless responsibilities, that is basic. Highlight measurable, demonstrable achievements that you have/had in the roles.
You seriously need to subscribe to membership plan now, if you haven't done so. Do you not see that we have so much value packed in this platform specifically for you? Go on and let us hold this £14.99 a year, while we give you access to hundreds of exclusive international vacancies weekly, from top employers in different parts of the globe. You cannot get this elsewhere, we promise you that. Not on Indeed, not on LinkedIn, no where else. Imaging having to spend time on Indeed searching for visa sponsorship jobs in your dream country, haha, goodluck. Go on and subscribe now and get your money's worth in opportunities.
4. SKILLS SECTION:
Do endeavor the different or present tools differently from skills. In certain instances, tools could be skills, but for presentation sake, it makes sense to differentiate them in the skills section. Project Management could be your skill as a DevOps Engineer, a skill you utilize tools like Asana, Trello, and Slack to execute. Recruitment could be one of your skills as an HR Specialist, a skill you utilize tools like LinkedIn recruitment, ATS like (Bamboohr, Smartrecruiter, etc, to execute. This is particularly needed for technical positions. You could list your skills by bullet points, then list the tools for each skill.
5. EDUCATION SECTION:
There isn't much to say here, except that you should list only what is relevant, that is, your academic and professional qualifications. Do not list conferences or trainings. List the qualifications with dates obtained.
Did we forget to mention that our Get Groomed members get a free CV review as part of their plan? They get a CV + LinkedIn + Cover letter makeover, in addition to personalized job updated for a period of 3 months.
6. CUSTOMIZE YOUR CV FOR EACH JOB:
This is definitely one of the oldest tricks in the book, most recruiters even specify this in the job ad. This means that you should edit your CV to reflect the language used in the job description, highlighting those skills they require.
Doing this for each job sounds tedious and because of this, most candidates take the lazy route and use the same CV to apply to hundreds of jobs, without editing anything. This is a waste of time. It is better you make 5 good applications with updated CV, Cover letter and in some cases, a portfolio, than forward the same CV to 100 jobs.
Understand that 100 Data Analytics jobs may be asking for 100 different things. The fact that they use the same title does not mean that they are asking for the same thing. The specific details are in the job description, so should always edit your CV to reflect the skills and experience they require.
GENERAL
Finally remove things that clog up your CV and are irrelevant, like date of birth (age), international recruiters mostly do not care about this, sex/gender (they also do not care), except in some cases. We already asked that you remove location. References too, especially when you included their contact details. References usually come into context at an advanced stage in the recruitment process, so do not include them for international jobs. If they will hire you, they will request for credible references at an advanced stage of the process. Keep things short too, your CV has no business being seven (7) pages long. You aren't the only candidate in the pool. Max page number should be 3, no more than 3 pages, anything else should go into your cover letter.
We hope these few points have helped you understand what is needed to make your CV professional and upgraded.
Click the link to download our approved template, and go on to adapt this template using the points we've made in this article, and thank us by subscribing to a membership plan, Seriously, we have bills to pay, so subscribe.
Don't forget to browse the site for international vacancies, and be on the look out for more content on how you can properly brand yourself to land international jobs and stuff like that.
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