Faq

Your CV is your prime opportunity to showcase your experience, skills and talent. It needs to work hard to reflect you and your background in the best light, but it also needs to show your target employer that you fit with the current skills and experience gaps they have in their organisation. The only way to do this successfully, and to maximise your chance to getting an interview, is to tailor your CV targeting it to the individual job you’re going for each and every time. Every job is unique. You need to harness this fact to your advantage. By approaching each job application in this way you will be able to get ahead of other applicants, many of whom will have used a more generic CV and approach.

If you really want that job, then it’s worth investing a bit of time and energy now to give yourself the very best shot at landing it. You’re far more advantaged by spending time tailoring a few, highly targeted applications to some select organisations rather than spending the same amount of time sending out generic CVs and applications in a scattergun way to tons and tons of organisations. Think targeted and spend your time there.

Well, in this increasingly competitive job market ‘good enough’ isn’t good enough anymore. Your CV needs to be outstanding to stand out from the crowd. We currently offer a free CV review (for a limited time only), so if you would like an expert to take a look then The CV Stylist will give you an honest opinion as well as offer you specific advice on how you could improve things.

Even some of the world’s leading CEOs benefit from an expert eye on their CV to help them make the most impact. However illustrious or successful your career to date has been, your CV could nearly always be improved further, particularly if you’re aiming for even more exciting and challenging opportunities.

Get a free CV review here.

LinkedIn is a valuable resource for recruiters and headhunters worldwide, and it’s becoming increasingly relevant to professionals and executives across all sectors, with people using it more and more every single day. It’s a fantastic place to network and find out about new opportunities. If you’re applying for a new job, then more than likely the recruiter or employer will check out your LinkedIn profile at some stage of the process.

To get noticed, your LinkedIn profile needs to hit a number of key SEO criteria to come out towards the top of any searches recruiters do to find individuals like you with your background and skills. Depending on your level of seniority, having a content-heavy and complete LinkedIn profile is really important in today’s job market. We can help you tailor and tweak your profile to the right level (contrastingly, if you’re C-Suite / Board level then in fact a content-heavy, too detailed profile could be doing you a disservice). You need to pitch yourself just right.

Finding new ways to connect and engage through LinkedIn is increasingly important. The CV Stylist can help you build up your LinkedIn profile, teach you the nuances of the platform and help you get to the top of searches so that you are more likely to get contacted about relevant job opportunities in the future.

We’re great at working to deadlines, so if you have a specific application submission date coming up that you want to hit then we can usually work to that. However, the quality of our work is our main priority. We’re not a CV hothouse where we turn things around in 24 hours (if you want that kind of service, then you can find tons of providers online – just don’t expect too much from them in terms of quality and attention to detail).

Generally, we spend from around 3 days up to around 2 weeks working with you. Through our tried and tested process we work hard to understand your objectives and what we’re aiming towards, get to know you and your professional background thoroughly through a friendly additional interview style conversation, and then work together to craft your new CV. We will liaise with you closely through this process, and we spend time ensuring you are absolutely happy with the final document. We keep going until you are completely satisfied and ready to send your CV out to the market.

If you’d like us to work with you on your CV, LinkedIn profile or cover letter, then just drop us an email (jo@thecvstylist.com) or give us a call on +44 (0) 203 871 0944 and we can chat about your specific requirements. It would be helpful if you can send through any previous or existing CVs you have used, a link to your current LinkedIn profile if you have one and any previous cover letters you have created.

It’s also really helpful if you think through your objectives. What is the ideal next role you are aiming for? Do you have a specific target company, or list of companies in mind? Do you know what sector(s) you would like to work in, or absolutely wouldn’t want to work in? The clearer your job search objectives at this stage, the more tailored and impactful your documentation is likely to be.

Video CVs are gaining in popularity all the time, especially with larger corporations and in certain sectors e.g. creative industries, design, marketing, social media. It’s often cited that Video CVs will become a main part of the standard application process in just a few years’ time. So, it’s worth getting your head around them now.

To find out more about Video CVs, check out our recent blog post about them.

Interview coaching is one of our favourite areas to work on, not least because we can see the huge difference it makes to job search success.

It’s hard to know how well you perform at interview. The feedback you get from previous interviewers (if you’re lucky enough to even get any!) is often veiled in politeness and can be misleading or even dismissive. So how do you know how you perform, and how you could do better?

Our interview coaching is totally tailored to you and your specific needs. We help you develop both your style and technique, and your content and delivery. You will work with us to develop and practice high impact answers, and evidenced stories and examples that you can use for multiple interview questions and scenarios. We’ll help you build up an adaptable interview toolkit that focuses your mind and makes a big impact, in all the right ways.

The CV Stylist has over 15 years’ experience of interviewing leading executives and Board members from all sectors of industry, from corporate backgrounds to not-for-profit, education and government, as well as working with high profile client organisations across all these spaces.

We know what works at interview, and what doesn’t. We know what recruiters are looking for.  We can provide you with tailored 1:1 interview coaching which includes mock interviews and honest, candid feedback with practical tips and techniques to get ahead. It’s a friendly and engaging process that will enable you to develop your skills and build your confidence in a safe, supportive context. Interview coaching is one of the best moves you can make to get ahead in the next step of your career.

There are lots of things you can do on interview day to help yourself feel confident and prepared, and to put you in a great job-winning mindset.

Check out our blog post here about all the great things you can and should be doing.

Personal branding is the practice of marketing yourself and your career as a brand. It’s essentially about self-positioning.

Self-packaging yourself in this way is no longer just for the likes of Richard Branson or Victoria Beckham. It’s becoming increasingly important for all types of professionals and executives. How you present yourself and market yourself both online and offline can be critical for career success. Managing your online identity, across multiple platforms, has become a foundation of job search strategies as more and more employers use social media tools to vet applicants before offering them interviews or job offers.

The CV Stylist can help you understand and develop your personal brand effectively, to ensure that your online and offline persona is in line with your career objectives and to help you create a professional online identity which will get you noticed.

There are hundreds of CV writing services out there, all of which offer very different outcomes. Some are dirt cheap, some are super quick, many are offered by individuals and companies with little recruitment experience, and many are ‘spray on’ options which simply polish up your existing documentation or just repurpose your content in a slightly different way. Most are very transactional. There is a lot of noise out there, and it can be hard to know what you’re actually getting.

The CV Stylist has over 15 years’ experience in headhunting at the highest levels, having worked with some of the world’s leading CEOs and executives from FTSE100 companies to leading charities and governments. We know what a great CV looks like, and what employers are looking for. We know how you can make an impact, and we know how to make the unique ‘you’ stand out. We also know that you want individual attention, and attention to detail. We don’t take shortcuts.

Our approach is totally tailored to your individual needs and objectives, so it’s highly bespoke. We don’t work with everybody. We only work with like-minded, ambitious and go-getting professionals who are prepared to invest time in themselves, and this process, in order to get ahead.

We take time to help you write and develop your CV. We never rush. And we insist on honing things until you are totally happy with the outcome. That doesn’t come cheap, but our clients understand that you need to invest in your career in order to succeed.

That said, we realise that not everybody has the budget to invest in our full CV writing services. So, whilst that is a great option for most, we also want to help graduates and individuals earlier on in their careers. It’s worth spending some time on our blog where there’s tons of free information, advice and insights into CV writing and more. We also have a range of video tutorials available to view which give you more specific advice on how to get ahead.

Of course! We are able to meet with clients face-to-face to work on documentation or for interview coaching. We are based in the South East and can travel into London or further afield as necessary (travel costs are expensed), or you’re welcome to come to us! We make a mean cup of tea. However, most clients prefer to work over the phone, Skype or Zoom in order to speed things along and that’s fine too.

We help people all the time with the full remit of CV writing, LinkedIn profile development and cover letters. It can be incredibly useful to assess your approach to all aspects of your job search arsenal at the same time in this way.

If you would like to combine other services, and/or add in interview coaching or personal branding too, then we can create a bespoke and tailored package for you which offers you great value for money. Just get in touch with us and we can chat through your individual objectives and requirements.

Great question! It makes it easier if you keep on top of updating your CV for each and every job you do. This way you can record all the key achievements and responsibilities of your roles whilst they are still fresh in your mind. This is particularly helpful for remembering key financials or numbers (e.g. direct reports, budget responsibilities, impact on bottom line) which people often forget if they try to recall them a year or so later. In our experience, however much people think they will remember later on, they don’t. Even if you don’t actually write this info into your actual CV document, it’s worth keeping a note somewhere of all the key points and information so you can refer to it later on when you do come to revise your CV.

If you are targeting a new role, or hoping to develop conversations with a headhunter about an appointment, then it’s always worth giving your CV a freshen up. Your CV should be targeted to each and every role you’re going for. Often it can actually be unhelpful to include absolutely everything you’ve ever done. Cull, cull, cull if it’s not relevant to the target job. We have seen far too many CVs, even those of leading CEOs, where each successive job role has just been ‘bolted on’ to a previous CV. If you’re not revisiting earlier job roles and viewing the CV in its entirety now with the target role firmly in mind, then you could well be doing yourself a disservice.

Your CV is fundamentally a marketing document, which means you should be sculpting it each and every time to the specific role you want next. In this way you’ll be giving yourself your best shot at success.

If you’re unsure if your CV is fit for its current purpose, or just want some general advice and feedback then feel free to email it over to us for a free review.