Change Management & Outcomes, the two essential ingredients in your executive CV.
Most people struggle to prepare a CV. Some executives worry about fitting everything in, others find it difficult to self-promote. CVs are sometimes written at a time of vulnerability, not always the easiest point to frame positive personal statements.
Writing an executive level CV requires thought and planning. As a leader, your experience is more complex and much broader. So how do you communicate your capability in just two pages? And that should be your limit, two pages. Concise communication is a highly valued executive skill, your CV needs to demonstrate this.
Recruiters vary in how they want to see a CV structured. Some like a skills or competency lead demonstration of your experience, others prefer a reverse chronological document. Either way, bullet points are essential with a maximum of ten words for each. To maximise the impact of those words, plan your content before attempting to put it into CV format.
Leave out any personal information, other than your name and how to contact you. So, no date of birth, nationality (other than to confirm a right to work in the jurisdiction if necessary), no photograph or graphics. If you include a link to a social media network, make sure the content is current, written to the same standard as your CV and aligned to the experience you wish to emphasise for the role to which you are applying. Make sure you save the document using a filename pertinent to the role for which you are applying and including your own name.
Begin with a short three or four sentence paragraph, to a maximum of 60 words, which summarises your professional life to date. Concise paragraphs are more likely to be read. Write it in the first person and touch on the skills or competencies most relevant to the position for which you are submitting the CV. These might include technical aspects to your work or examples of organisation leadership, but make sure they are reflective at some point of the content to follow.
The core content of your CV is that which shares your work history and experience. The reader is looking for three elements threaded throughout your various experiences to date. They are broadly 1. Technical prowess as relevant to the role, 2. Change Management and 3. Outcomes.
The first of these depends on the nature of the position. Technical prowess may need to be more in depth for technical leadership than operational leadership appointments. But in each case, what really matters? What environments did you work within? How technically progressive was the organisation, as relevant to the role you held?
The second, Change Management, is telling the reader what you were accountable for. A recruiter for example, will infer that if you were effective with change, you were capable of creating a vision and leading others to the achievement of that vision. This applies to smaller but important task areas like a process change as well as larger scale change projects. It allows you to weave in both the technical skills referred to above and operational team sizes you have managed and initiatives you have delivered.
The third element, Outcomes, explains to the reader what impact you had, what you actually achieved. The measurable Outcome indicates a level of prowess in the area for which you were accountable.
Pull out your content when planning your document under these three headings. Bring the content together in bullet points under each role held outlining, what you did in the position, what technical exposure or experience you gained and what impact you had. For example, the Change Management heading for a task area in one of your roles might have been to improve production efficiencies. The Technical element for a non-technology role, might include inventory control systems used or implemented. It is an opportunity to highlight commercial, financial, HR or Planning systems deployed. Outcome would be the measurable efficiency improvement. The bullet point is set out as “Streamlined manufacturing processes for two sites, deploying system x and reducing waste by 14%”. A project to automate processes using digitalisation within projected cost and timelines might read as “Led a digital transformation programme, deploying system x, improving customer experience, delivering on budget and within timeframe”.
Maintain this format throughout your resumé, depending on the number of employers you have been with or positions you have held with the one company, keep your bullet points to between five and seven per role. Current positions can be more than this, but positions prior to 15 years ago rarely need more than two or three lines.
Complete your executive CV by setting out your education, professional qualifications and professional memberships/affiliations at the end. As a very final step, get someone you trust to proofread it thoroughly. Grammatical or spelling mistakes are not acceptable at your level.
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Article written by Michael O'Leary, Chairman, HRM Search Partners.