One of the most heartbreaking situations that comes out of a recession is talent gone to waste. Or talent left unused.

Young people – school leavers or recent graduates – skilled and educated, but unable to find work that their studies prepared them for. This with a punitive benefits system that forces you to apply for your quota of jobs or you lose your JSA, and a lack of finance to move to where suitable jobs might be, leaves many in job-seeker misery.

I was struck by the advice that employers gave on a radio programme to recent grads who have fallen through the cracks. Long-term unemployed (one for two years), geographically isolated, and tantalisingly out of reach of a job because of a lack of follow-on qualifications.

The employers’ advice was, for the most part, uninspiring and blinkered. “Become a teacher” or “Our graduate schemes are great”.

Basically, the problem is that employers don’t understand you if you don’t fit their mould. They’re in the business of thinking literally – not laterally. An employer wants someone to fill their needs, at this moment, and at this price point. Don’t expect a busy manager to work out from your skills or educational background how you might fit in within the company.

University careers services and graduates have upped their game considerably in the last few years, with a strong emphasis on employability and skills awareness. But it seems that many employers haven’t really kept pace or changed their mindset – even when the whole world of work is changing on its axis. Permanent roles – say goodbye. Jobs for life – gone the way of the dodo. Portfolio careers, zero-hours contracts – this is the new reality for many grads who don’t get on to traditional graduate schemes.

If you’re one of those who has fallen through the cracks, don’t look to industry for advice. More than ever, you are on your own when it comes to forging a career.

By the way, the most consistently useful advice by far on the radio programme came from a university careers officer. If you haven’t done so already, make the careers office your first port of call for guidance and support.

Photo credit: Ozyman

This is a guest post from Frankie Pocock, online researcher at the Graduate Recruitment Bureau.

At the Graduate Recruitment Bureau we see lots of successful young graduates who we go on to place in roles with good companies. We also see candidates who are not so successful and who we may find trickier to place. In this article we share some insider info, and give you a few pointers about what you might be doing in terms of CV writing and interview techniques to put recruiters off.

Vague first sentence

A recruiter has to look through a huge volume of CVs. The first sentence should outline your degree, where you did it, what result you got and what you’re looking for career-wise. This means that the recruiter has everything they need to work out if you’re a potential match for a role almost immediately.

If your first sentence is vague and meaningless then the chances of them trawling through the rest of your CV to find out what they need to know are slim. A good trick is to give it to someone who hasn’t looked at it before, give them twenty seconds to read it then ask them to pick out the main points they remember. If they can’t tell you the main points, your layout is not quite right.

No personal profile

Not having a personal profile on your CV is also a no-no. How can a recruitment consultant or a potential employer get to know what you’re all about if you’re missing the section that tells them? Personal profiles can be tricky – a bit about what you’re interested in and what kind of career you’re after should be enough.

Generic CV

Something that employers and recruiters see a lot of are CVs that haven’t been tailored specifically to the job. Sending out the same CV for each role you apply for won’t do. You need to research the individual roles and then outline the skills that are perfect for it.

We sometimes get candidates sending in CVs stating they would like a job in one field but have then applied for a job in a different field; this makes it look like you are just applying for anything going and haven’t really thought about the specific role.

Editing and re-editing your CV is incredibly important. Get someone else to read through your CV as well because a fresh pair of eyes can really help. The same thing applies with cover letters – tailor them specifically and get someone to read through.

Lack of clarity

Communication skills are absolutely vital at interview. Speak slowly and clearly. Say what you need to say succinctly because rambling will just make you look nervous. Focus on answering the question you’ve been asked and give yourself a second to think before you answer. There’s no need to rush – interviewers understand that nerves can be difficult to overcome. They won’t begrudge you a few seconds’ thinking time and your answer will be more comprehensive.

Too informal

Keep your language appropriate for the situation. Remember that the interviewer isn’t your friend and calling them “mate” isn’t okay. I’m not saying they won’t be your friend in the future – maybe you’ll hit it off wonderfully, who knows? – but until that happens, keep it formal.

You need to dress to impress at interview and show the recruiter you’ve made an effort. Even if everyone in the office is wearing flip flops it doesn’t mean it’s appropriate for you to.

No preparation

The biggest thing that recruiters will be looking out for during the interview is preparation. Turning up unprepared is a guaranteed way to remain jobless. You need to find out a bit about the company you’re applying to work with. Look up how they started, who the keys players are, what it is they do and how they do it.

It’s also important to fully understand the role you’re applying for. Make sure you know what your key duties and responsibilities will be and think about what it is that you personally can bring to the role.

Not Knowing Your CV

Go through your CV and think what questions the recruiter might ask you in relation to it. Why did you decide to have a gap year? Why did you change your degree subject? Why are you leaving your current job? If you think about these things before you get there then you’ll have a good answer ready and won’t be forced to think on the spot.

Of course, you will get asked questions you haven’t prepared for and this is where you need to be calm and not rush your answer. Give yourself a chance to form a good response.

Photo credit: Toni Blay

Your CV is not the only marketing tool you have. Obviously, if you’re applying for advertised jobs, you’ll need a CV in the first instance. But in a market where applicants are plenty, your CV on its own is probably not enough to set you apart from other applicants.

Many recruiters and hiring managers will check you out (online) before deciding whether to call you in for an interview. They’re looking for evidence of your expertise and suitability (often referred to as “social proof”). What they find there could well make the difference.

Being able to prove your skills in other ways than a CV has become almost a necessity for job seekers. I say “almost”, because there are certain categories of jobs and job seekers for whom it doesn’t apply:

- for most unskilled jobs
- for a minority of skilled jobs where hiring managers have decided not to search online
- for highly professional jobs where decision makers (such as senior partners) have probably already heard of you

But otherwise, it most definitely helps to be able to furnish proof that you are indeed talented, experienced, and up to the job. Here are some ways you can build your reputation.

A strong, online presence

A fully complete LinkedIn profile is a good start. By “complete”, you’ll need a photo, present and two past places of employment, 3 recommendations and at least 50 connections.

To be more easily found, you also need keywords (relevant to your industry), skills and endorsements, and evidence of activity through either your updates, or through your groups.

Activity elsewhere (on blogs, twitter and forums) is also a good sign that you’re enthusiastic about the industry, and keen to share ideas with peers.

A positive name check

If you’re Googled, what comes up against your name? Aim to have at least four, positive searches for your name. You can do this through creating social media profiles, by having a blog or personal website, or even a page such as on VisualCV, through writing Amazon reviews, nd so on.

A wide network

Probably the best overall career insurance you can ever get, your network can keep you informed about jobs, projects and leads; be counted on to refer you to others; and provide you with information, support and ongoing professional inspiration. Obviously, if someone in your network can also put in a good word to someone with hiring authority, you’re already half-way to a new job.

Photo credit: Sarah Reido

What an employer most wants to see on your CV is proof that you can do the job you’re applying for – preferably within the first few seconds of reading.

This is true whether you’ve had a traditional career path, or a diverse one.

Of course, it’s a little more tricky if your path has meandered all over the place, with breaks and side moves, but what’s in your favour is that you get to write your career story. You can choose what to include and where to include it – you don’t need to include details if they don’t fit your central theme. This is where making sense of your career history is a vital first step before you start writing your CV.

The key challenge is to create a smooth, seamless work history (with as few gaps as possible) that avoids confusing your reader. The fewer questions they have about your aptitude to do the job, the better.

Here are some ways to format your CV to help you achieve this.

Create a heading from the job title itself

This is a neat trick that many professional CV writers use. Under your name and contact details, put the name of the job you’re applying for in the centre of the page. This has the effect of defining you as that person right from the start.

Don’t waffle on in your profile area about career moves or changes. Instead, just write some of the skills areas or personal attributes that are relevant to the job. So to continue the customer service example from previous posts, something like “5 years’ customer service experience” (this can be five years amassed from various jobs by the way) and the sectors in which you’ve done this, such as Telecoms, Banking, Insurance, for example.

Avoid strict chronological formats

Listing all your jobs in reverse chronological order is great if you want to demonstrate continued progression in one type of role or sector. It’s not so useful if your path is fragmented. Instead, section your career history – either by theme, industry, or skill.

If by theme, create mini-sections (such as “Customer Service”) and include all your customer service type roles here. If by industry, your mini-sections could be “Telecoms” or “Insurance”, while by skill, your mini-sections could be “Problem-solving” or “Communications”. How you choose to segment your career history depends on various factors, such as what’s most important in the job description, or what’s most appropriate from your career history.

Make sure that your mini-sections include overall dates, and that they provide interesting information, such as the scope of your role and key achievements.

After these sections, include a full list of employers, again with dates.

Grouping information by theme also helps if you’ve had multiple temporary work or projects. (See my article on Guardian Careers on How to write a CV for portfolio careers for more tips on portfolio CVs.)

Next post: Why your CV only tells part of the story

Photo credit: MJM

The people who seem to ask for help most with their CVs are generally not those who have held similar jobs throughout their careers.

Often, it tends to be people who have had various careers, with all the richness of experience that this implies, who struggle most. People with non-linear career paths (sideways steps, U-turns and even retro moves) plus a bit of chopping and changing across roles or industries.

If this sounds like you, you probably face two challenges: firstly you need to make sense of your overall career path for a potential employer; and secondly, you need to show progression along that path. This is particularly important if you’re aiming to move into a management position, for example.

The myth of the perfect career path

Understandably, perhaps, people tend to fret about not having a “perfect CV” that ticks all the job description boxes. When you haven’t followed a traditional career path it can be easy to think that you’re somehow less able than someone who has plodded diligently along.

However, a traditional career history is becoming rarer and rarer. When you talk to people in your target companies, or already working in the roles you aspire to, you’re likely to find that for every person who moved logically up the ladder, or from promotion to promotion, at least two didn’t.

How to make sense of your career history

The first thing you need to do to create a unified theme is to accept that your personal career path, although perhaps not conventional, is what makes you interesting and unique. Experience in different types of companies, facing and overcoming different challenges, learning and testing new skills: all these can be relevant, both told as a mini-story on your CV and as a talking point at interview.

For most of us, when we’re asked to talk about our greatest achievements, we draw a blank. So it’s often easier instead to plot your path. Do this chronologically at first, and try to see it through the prism of your target job description. So for example, if you’re going for a customer-service role, identify all the instances of customer-service type skills and experience in your career to date.

Don’t limit yourself to only paid work – voluntary work counts too. At the same time, make a note of any training or education that increased your knowledge in the area or which proves your interest.

Don’t dwell too much on either career gaps or on job titles. Instead, aim to draw a sort of career line, where everything on that line shows how you’re leading up to where you are today. In jobs where you’ve had other responsibilities than the main one you’re presently concerned with, decide if any of the other skills are somehow relevant. If they’re not, be ruthless and eliminate them from your career line.

Showing career progression

At this point, a pattern should start to emerge. If you’ve had (for example) that customer-service experience stretching back over the years, you’ll start to see how you used those skills in each job, and how those skills developed from job to job.

At the same time, you can start focussing on your milestones in each of those jobs. Generally speaking, a paragraph of duties and responsibilities is not what makes hiring managers sit up and take notice. What they want to see is how your work performance benefitted the company. Figures and percentages count: how much money did you save / make for the company; how many more customers did you keep; how much time did you shave off each customer query, etc.

In the next post: Putting it together – how to format your CV for non-traditional career paths

Photo credit: TigerPixel

Of all the CV problems people worry about, having unexplained gaps seems to the biggest, judging by the questions we get in the Guardian Careers CV clinics.

Other variations on the theme:

“I’ve taken time out and now I have a gap of one year / 18 months / two years etc.”
“I was made redundant and now there’s a gap on my CV.”
“I was ill in the past and didn’t have a job for months at a time.”
“I took time out to bring up children / volunteer / get well and now it looks like I couldn’t hold down a job.”

How serious are gaps on your CV?

In most situations, a gap of a few months (say between jobs) or way back in your earlier career history, is not going to be a deal-breaker. Most hiring managers or recruiters recognise that not everyone can move seamlessly from one job to another, that companies downsize and make people redundant.

Longer (more recent) gaps pose a different problem. Unless you can offer a reason or mask the gap in some way, it can raise questions. Obviously, the fewer questions your CV flags up in the mind of a hiring manager, the more likely you’ll get into the maybe / yes pile.

Dealing with gaps

Masking techniques involve highlighting other projects (voluntary, educational, own side project etc) that you can use to explain the missing dates. You don’t need to say if these were paid or not, but you do need to treat them in the same way as you would paid work experience: quantifying with numbers to show your impact.

If you decide to include an explanation for a gap, do so with care. Don’t put yourself in a worse position by writing something like “illness”. A prospective employer is almost immediately going to wonder whether you’re fit for work, or what that illness might have been. Explanations that are less likely to raise questions are “personal sabbatical” or “accompanying spouse on an overseas secondment”, for example.

Other ways to deal with gaps are to get creative with how you show (or don’t show) dates. You can leave off university / education dates if the years immediately following you were drifting from job to job, taking time to understand your career options, for example.

You can also use years for dates (rather than months / years) consistently through your CV to take the focus away from a month / few months’ gap here and there.

Don’t over-focus on gaps

Very few people have a seamless work history, with no gaps, U-turns or false starts. But a well-written CV looks past these “imperfections” and instead focuses on what makes the person great for the job. If everything else on your CV paints a picture of your strengths, experience and achievements, gaps become much less significant. One way to do this is to start with a list of what makes you a great candidate for the job before you start writing your CV. That way, as you write, you’ll be focussing on the positives – rather than the negatives.

In the next post – how to create your narrative to make sense to an employer.

Photo credit: thenoodleator

Life is too short to be stuck in a job that doesn’t inspire or fulfill you. If you think that sounds idealistic, unrealistic, or self-indulgent, think about it from another perspective.

If you’re doing little else but just coasting along and doing work that doesn’t challenge or stretch you, how will you explain this period of inertia to a potential employer a few years down the line, asks John Lees, in How to get a job you’ll love (2013-14 Edition).

He observes that many of us plan a holiday or new kitchen in greater detail than we plan our own careers, with the result that we hand over control of our career. Or we might stay put and keep our heads down, unhappy or stagnating in unrewarding roles, fearful of making the wrong move…

Many of us can identify with that.

John Lees unpicks the reasons why making good career decisions is so difficult, and through a series of exercises (easily done with old-fashioned pen and paper) addresses the constraints we impose on ourselves, explores skills (including those that are as yet undeveloped, undervalued or unpolished) knowledge, interests and values. Other exercises help you identify your career hot buttons (what you really want from a career or job), and to understand your strongest areas of intelligence and how your personality.

He’s very clear on one aspect of job hunting: in a world with more choice than ever before, there’s huge pressure on us to find the “right” occupation, and the sense that somewhere out there is a perfect job for each one of us. Probably the reason why articles with “find your dream job with our easy personality quiz” or similar are so popular – and compelling. But it’s not about waiting for the dream job to come along, he advises, but also about working out what kind of work would be a good fit.

Once you’ve done the exercises and identified some good avenues to explore, John Lees has great advice on how to research sectors, creative job search strategies (how to network – baby steps), putting together a good CV, and planning interviews. There are also chapters on using social media, portfolio careers, and long-term career management.

Highly recommended for job seekers and career changers.

How to Get a Job You’ll Love is available from Amazon.

This is a guest post by Milestone Operations, a U.K.-based recruitment company specialising in HGV jobs.

The transport and logistics industry is not one that generates much coverage on career websites, yet the industry is vast and diverse, and still relatively strong despite the economic downturn. The industry itself is worth over £75 billion to the UK economy and employs around 2.3 million people in over 196,000 companies (Skills for Logistics, 2010).

Skills and careers

The industry is suffering from major skills shortages across all areas, although various initiatives are addressing these. HGV drivers, for example, need to obtain the new CPC qualification, while skills and credentials are being examined at junior, middle and senior levels in supply chain management.

The Professional Development Stairway is a key example of the career paths available to workers in the industry. There are also numerous schemes available for graduates in various departments, such as planning, strategy, logistical management, finance, marketing, engineering, R&D, IT, health and safety, and customer services.

Sector trends

The shipping sector is suffering from a combination of plummeting demand and an oversupply of ships as vessels ordered during growth years are delivered. The shipping industry enjoyed five boom years until 2007, but the global recession has sapped demand for the transportation of Asian-made goods.

The logistics industry is dominated by scarce resources – oil in particular. Prices fluctuate regularly and this will continue to impact the industry until alternative fuels are a viable option long-term. Fuel duty in the UK was frozen in August 2012, providing relief to road haulage companies.

Leaner and tighter supply chains means uncertainty in haulage, and impact on warehousing, as supply chains move towards Just-In-Time production. Air freight companies will also be affected by stricter environmental regulations over the next few years.

Opportunities

As the fortunes of the transport and logistics industry are closely connected to the economic cycle, gradual economic recovery will lead to growth in the logistics sector. Some of the key current trends:

Innovation is now becoming a requirement to keep up with developments in technology and strategy.

Investment is certainly needed at management level, and career progression is an important incentive for graduates entering the industry.

Recruitment of HGV drivers is needed to almost double to offset predicted losses of drivers missing the Driver CPC enforcement deadline in September 2012.

Photo credit: SallyB2

A mixed year for jobseekers on the whole.

IT was the biggest sector for vacancies in 2012, according to study published by Adzuna, with over 1 million jobs created. Other sectors that have performed well are engineering, healthcare, finance and retail, while pay has risen also for translators.

In terms of location, cities that offer the least jobseekers by vacancy are Aberdeen, Cambridge, Guildford, Reading and Oxford, while the cities with the most number of jobseekers per vacancy are Hull, Sunderland, Southend, Wolverhampton and Bradford.

Not all jobs are created equal. Adzuna reports that 100,000 jobs were created by London 2012, although most of these were temporary. The huge rise in part-time roles plus the “north-south divide” also skews the data.

Trends for 2013 jobseekers

1. Skills are vital

Financial, software and foreign-language skill-sets are generally well-paid. If you have these skills, make sure they are updated where necessary, and prominently mentioned in your applications. Career changers: make upskilling a vital cornerstone of your career planning.

2. Some sectors are healthier than others

Engineering, energy and oil are flagged up in the data, while manufacturing could also see an increase in 2013. Conversely, public sector pay freezes and redundancies make this a tougher area to break into.

3. Permanent positions will be harder to come by

The explosion of part-time work does little to mask the dearth of permanent positions. Consider juggling more than one job at a time, or combine telecommuting or freelance work with part-time roles, for example. Learn how to present serial roles coherently in your CVs and cover letters.

Photo credit: daniel moyle

Most people apply for jobs in the same way. They submit their CV to a job board or to a recruiter.

And because it’s very often a tick-box type exercise (“done that job before, can do it again”, or “got most of those skills, no harm in applying”) not much thought goes into making your CV really stand out. After all, if you’re applying for a number of jobs in this way (and that’s what people typically do), it is too time-consuming to tailor or design your CV each time for the job.

But time and again, companies tell us that they want to see a specific, tailored CV rather than a generic, catch-all one. Companies want evidence that job seekers have researched the role and the company, matched their talents to the requirements, and more often than not, attached a compelling cover letter to the package too. Of course this takes more time and effort, but your CV will probably stand out for the care you’ve put into it.

The problem still remains, though. If you’re applying for an advertised vacancy, you’ll be competing at ever-increasing odds. A tailored CV should get you in the top 10% of applications. But to improve your chances even further, invest in a professionally-written and designed CV.

I’m not talking about the CV companies who will format your CV into the same template they use for everyone else. Those sorts of CVs generally cost from about £45 to £100 (though some, remarkably, cost even more). While your CV will look neat and tidy, it will probably only stand out by virtue of not looking dreadful.

I’m talking about those companies (or writers) who interview you at length, get to know your career goals, understand your strengths – and then weave them into compelling, beautifully-designed and easy-to-read marketing documents. (Which, essentially, is what a CV is.)

These CVs break the rules. They include graphics, photos, splashes of colour and other design elements. They are often more than two pages long. They exude confidence, promise and give the hiring manager no choice but to pick up the phone to set up a meeting. They’ll cost you more than £100, but they’ll cut your job search in half.

These are not CVs that you’ll typically upload onto job boards. They’re unlikely to work with ATS software. They’re far better for in-person meetings – when you have been able to network in – or “warm” prospects – people you have already talked to on the phone, for example.

Here are some of the elements of professionally-written CVs that will make yours stand head and shoulders over the rest. The examples are all from Career Directors International 2012 Resume Winners.

1. Images and visuals

Use graphs to show financial information, such as sales growth. It’s much easier to get over remarkable increases in an image than it is in text. An example here.

You can also use logos, and in an inevitable blurring of LinkedIn and CVs, your photo might not be out of place either. (This is more of an executive biography than a traditional CV, but I expect to see photos being used more frequently.)

2. Colours

You can adopt colours for a branding theme. This CV uses company colours (such as gold) to striking effect.

This one – the cool blues – uses colours for two different effects: for “smart art” or stylised logo to match the applicant’s industry, and then the colour scheme to highlight the applicant’s KPIs.

This one, along with logo and colours, actually looks like a marketing brochure. Stylish, expensive, and completely on-brand.

3. Focus on numbers

You must get your value across, and including metrics and achievements is the obvious way to do it. This CV includes a “success by the numbers” side bar.

4. Keyword rich

Make sure that your wording mirrors what people with hiring authority want to see, as in this example.

5. Speak to your strengths

Focus on what you can offer, not on what you don’t have. These two CVs are written for graduates, lacking much experience. In the first one, the “Qualifications in Action section” shows off on-the-job training, further bolstered by endorsements. It’s also a great example of how to show technical education and skills without using up too much space.

This CV highlights project work.

6. Originality

This one is fun and quirky without losing sight of the target role. Both appropriate and compelling.

While in this one, the interviewer has space to write notes.

7. Tell a story

Almost a magazine format, this CV has “Fast facts” sections.

8. Multi-purpose
There’s been quite a lot of reference to modular CVs recently, and this is a lovely example. Three stand-alone pages, with the emphasis 100% on experience and results – you’ll find it hard to find many employment dates. I’d say, though, that it doesn’t really matter as the rest of the information is persuasive enough.

Of course, it stands to reason that all the CVs are beautifully-written, in a lean, concise style, but with the precision of language you’d expect from an expert writer.

Be inspired!