I promised myself that, once I found a job, I would post here what I have learned. As with everything, I do it with a goal in mind: to help those who are currently in the same situation and also to give ideas to companies to improve their selection processes. Because they definitely need to improve.

(In case my thoughts are useless, at least, just by simply writing them down will be useful for me to summarize what I have learned and to close this stage).

6 months of active search, 30 interviews and 3 business cases presented. All of this gives me enough material for a few topics. I will write several posts and in this one I will focus on the most basic aspect of job searching: the CV.

📷 Picture: yes or no?
The first few weeks I struggled to get interviews. Initially, I sent my CV without a photo due to the Australian custom of NOT including one. Finally, I modified it and put a photo. I am not sure if it was because of this or other changes I made, but since then I started to receive many more calls.

I didn't like having to include my photo because I believe that people should be evaluated objectively, without the possibility of favoritism or discrimination based on appearance. However, here it is normal to add your photo, so to increase my chances of interviews I had no choice but to change it to fit in the local "culture".

🤗 Making it easy.
You are about to apply for your dream job. Now, imagine for a moment that you are the recruiter for that selection process. You are really busy and you have to analyze a lot of resumes, what would you like the CVs to look like?

Probably you will select to interview those candidates who have customized their CVs for the company. You want to see that they have read the job description carefully and have highlighted their specific experience and skills that fit for the role requirements. Additionally, a structured and easy-to-read CV, with bold text for the important details and graphics or icons that visually help you to quickly indicate if the candidate could be a good fit.

📢 Be creative. Differentiate yourself.
If you think the above is not enough, then consider adding something that will make you stand out so you communicate better or beyond the CV. Put a link to your website, talk about your values, make the "classic" video presentation, explain what you do as a volunteer in an association, put a paragraph about why you want to work in that company, change the design completely or write it in poem format (ChatGPT will surely assist you).

Many of these thoughts, and some more to come, were inspired by my coach Natalia Martinez. She was my coach throughout this process and, with her questions, helped me think what else I could do to get that job I was looking for and that I finally found.

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash