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7 Facts and information About the Person Who’s Reviewing Your curriculum vitae

When you write your curriculum vitae (with or without advice and professional help), who’s your target audience? Who are you trying to satisfy?

in the Beginning, you are not writing your curriculum vitae to satisfy yourself. For that matter, you are not writing it to satisfy any “expert,” the writer of the curriculum vitae book you just read, the recruiter you are working with, your career guidance counselor, your cousin Fred who’s a human resources manager, or even a professional person curriculum vitae writer.

You are writing your curriculum vitae for a particular kind of reader: a potential employer. And if you’re like most of us, you make some very, very optimistic assumptions about that reader. You’re certain that your reader is eager to find the best person for the job. You’re confident that your reader is going to see the important things in your curriculum vitae, and that his or her eye will be drawn to all of those clever formatting tricks you’ve used (columns, underlining, different fonts, boldfacing, italics, strong verbs, skills, numbers, results, etc.).

But you’d better take off the rose-colored glasses. Your curriculum vitae has a better than 98 percent chance of ending up in the garbage can (real or virtual). To increase the odds that yours won’t end up there, here are seven characteristics you should know about the psychology of the typical curriculum vitae reader.

1. Curriculum vitae readers are some of the smartest and most skeptical readers in the world. They know that at least half of what they read consists of lies, exaggerations, half-truths, and semantic and formatting tricks. They don’t accept anything at face value. Remember, the typical curriculum vitae reader sees literally thousands; they know every trick in the book by now.

2. Most readers are in a bad mood, not a happy mood of eager expectancy. They’ve got 300 curriculum vitaes to read, and nobody is giving them an extra penny to carefully peruse each one. They’re rushed for time, annoyed at having to read yet another curriculum vitae, and hostile rather than sympathetic. Reading your curriculum vitae is a burden that’s keeping their attention from what they consider much, much more important matters.

3. Therefore, the typical curriculum vitae reader is looking for a quick and convincing reason to throw yours out. Some will even discard it if they don’t like the envelope or the way the email looks. Some will read only the curriculum vitae and not the cover letter, or vice versa. And they’re unwilling to open up a zip file. You know how annoying it is to get an email that requires you to open up several files; for the curriculum vitae reader, it’s triply annoying.

4. They are unimpressed by the latest curriculum vitae fad. For a long time, it was (and largely still is) using strong verbs. Since a verb is an action word, we think readers will be impressed by lots of great verbs. They’re not. Another big craze is numbers. Some experts say that you’ve got to have lots of quantitative data in your curriculum vitae, or no one will take you seriously. I see curriculum vitaes now that are nothing but a bewildering array of numbers, and I don’t believe it’s any more impressive to the typical curriculum vitae reader than is a bewildering array of verbs.

5. None will read it in detail; that we all know. All will skim-read it for about twenty seconds or less. They are looking for certain information first, to see if the curriculum vitae is worth reading in more detail. Usually they look for job titles and academic degrees first. Some look first for gaps in employment, some for certain skills, and some for length of employment. Each reader has his or her own top priority to scan for first. And even if she reads it in detail, she’ll give it to five other people who will skim it.

6. Most readers know that their company is in no hurry to hire. Even if they are interested in you, they will take their time responding. They are not interested in calling you back right away, even if they like your curriculum vitae.

7. They are not interested in your personal objectives for your life and your career. They are only interested in how you can help their company solve its problems and achieve its goals—that’s why they hire. But they are totally unaware of your unique strengths and value that you can potentially bring to the organization. That’s because in most curriculum vitaes, the person’s unique strengths and potential value are buried somewhere in the middle of the curriculum vitae and not written for a skimmer/reader.

So, when you write your curriculum vitae (or have anyone else help you write it), keep the above characteristics in mind. You have to give your reader 1) what she’s looking for FIRST, and 2) what you want her to find FIRST. That means that you cannot emphasize everything equally in your curriculum vitae. You have to write it so that she sees her priorities and yours instantly. Make sure to keep that in mind, and you’ll have a much better chance of having your curriculum vitae taken seriously.