Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the Standout CV YouTube channel. In this video I'm going to teach you how to write an effective profile for your CV. So the profile is the introductory paragraph that sits at the very top of the CV and its aim is to hook recruiters attention when they first open up the CV and make sure they stick around to read the rest of it. So before I dive into the guide, if you're new here, don't forget to hit the red subscribe button below so you get access to all of my CV advice videos. Now to kick this video off I just wanted to demonstrate to you why the profile at the top of your CV is so important to the success of your job applications. And I'm going to do this by putting you in the shoes of a recruiter so you can see things from their perspective. So this is a typical recruiter's inbox. As you can see it's full of applications from candidates just like you and this is typically where your CV will end up when you apply for a job through a job website. So imagine this is your application here at the top. Once the recruiter has opened that, if you've written a good enough cover letter, they'll then go on to open up the CV and this is what they'll see. They'll see this part of the CV here which I like to call the top quarter. So it's basically the part of the document that is visible without the reader having to scroll down like this. So unless the recruiter actively decides to scroll down the page then all of this is not seen. This is the only bit that you can see. Now from my experience of working in recruitment I can tell you that if a recruiter opens up your CV and they don't see some of the key things that they've been briefed to look for so things like specific skills, knowledge, qualifications etc. In this top quarter here then they might just close the CV straight down without even scrolling down to this part and then they'll just close down the CV and go back to their inbox that's full of lots of other applicants that they can choose from. And especially if they're pushed for time and their inbox looks like this which is pretty normal for most recruiters. And if that happens you're just going to waste lots of applications and you're not going to get many calls. So for this reason it's so so important that you get this CV profile right and you grab people's attention with it so they stick around to read the rest of it. Now that you know why it's so important how do you actually go about writing a CV profile that's going to hold people's attention get them a bit excited about you and commit to reading the rest of your CV? Well here are a few simple guidelines to stick to. Firstly keep it brief. It's just meant to be an introduction so it only needs to be a few lines long. If you drone on forever here you're going to lose people straight away. Secondly keep it high level. You just want to give an overall summary of your experience and knowledge here so save these specific details of job duties and achievements for later on in your actual work experience section. Number three is to tailor it to the jobs you're applying for. This is the most important thing to remember. You need to fill this profile with the things that your target employers want to see or you're not going to get noticed. So spend some time researching the jobs you plan to apply for. Make a list of the skills they're looking for and make sure you get them all into this profile. Number four is don't use cliche terms. Don't fill the CV with meaningless phrases like hard-working team player or strong communicator. These terms are overused and they don't actually tell people anything factual about you. If you take a look at this cliche based profile for an example you know the high achieving professional with a strong work ethic blah blah blah. Now that's really great but it doesn't tell us at all what this person does. You know is he a doctor? Is he an accountant? A graduate? There's no way of knowing so avoid that at all costs and keep those terms to a minimum or out of your profile altogether. The fifth point is to sell yourself. Don't be afraid to brag a bit. You know talk about your highest level of accomplishments and big yourself up with some big positive terms. You know it's no time to be modest here when you're trying to sell yourself to employers. So what type of information should you put into your profile to make sure that you're getting people interested in you when they open up the CV? Well the contents of your profile will obviously differ depending on your profession and the types of jobs you're applying for but generally speaking you should be giving people a high level overview of your skills, knowledge and experience. So this is a good generic CV profile example that I'm going to use to explain how this works in practice. If you want to see some different examples of CV profiles after I've run through this I've put together a big list of 17 CV profiles from lots of different industries into one of my blog posts and I've put a link to it in the description below this video. So anyway here are some of the ideal things that you need to include in your profile. The types of companies you've worked for. So have you worked for investment banks, retail stores, local governments? You know let people know where you've had the exposure. People you support. So who do you work for? Who does your work benefit? This could be internal people like your line managers or external people like customers. Important role specific skills. So these are skills that are really crucial to the jobs you're applying for. So for example if you're going for sales jobs you need to be talking about lead generation, upselling, cross-selling. But if you work in IT support then you're going to need to be talking about troubleshooting, diagnosis, performing upgrades and things like that. Relevant qualifications. If there are qualifications that are important to the jobs you're applying for then make sure you include them here. Now qualifications aren't important in some jobs but certainly if you're applying to any regulated professions like law, finance or anything medical then you need to mention them in your profile. System knowledge. If you know how to use popular IT systems, software packages, databases or planning tools etc and you know that your target employers value them then get them into the profile and make them seen. The benefits you deliver. So what does your work actually achieve for employers? How do you help them? Do you save them time? Do you increase their profits? This is really important to get across because you need to show people what they're going to get in return if they hire you. Now that's not an exhaustive list of everything that will ever go into every one CV profile but it's certainly a good base to work from and you just need to adapt and tailor it to your situation and the requirements of your target employers. So hopefully that's given you a good steer on how to write your own CV profile and don't forget to visit the standout CV website if you want to see some more good examples of CV profiles. I've put a link to that page in the description. So that brings me to the end of the video. If you found it helpful please give the video a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to the channel. We've got lots more videos to help you write the rest of your CV on here and of course good luck with your job search.