Career Workshop

CAReeR WORkSh O P

Job hunting can be dispiriting, particularly if you send off application after application yet somehow rarely get invited for an interview. In this article, Dr David Cottenden provides a behind-the-scenes and tell-all view of how to create that successful CV and job application, based on his experience as a physicist recruiter at TTP plc, one of Cambridge’s top science and technology consultancies.

when you’ve spotted an appealing job ad, before you sit down to update your CV and draft that application letter, consider your tactics for a moment. In many of the applications I review, I encounter an applicant telling the recruiter about themselves. I would suggest that, instead of focusing on biography, your overall objective should be to show the person reviewing your application that you understand how to be successful in the role, and to provide evidence that you can do it.

Employers are all different (more on this later), but one thing they all have in common is that they want to be successful. Recruitment is a big part of company success, so your primary objective is to show the person who is reviewing your application that you understand what success looks like for that organisation and in the role you’re applying for.

The job description will usually be a good starting point to develop this understanding, but it’s advisable to look wider than that: the employer’s website, their careers pages and the news may give you an impression of the priorities of the employer at the current time. You can also talk to friends and contacts who may know the employer.

Now sit down and think: how can you, in a few statements, summarise what a successful employee in that role would be and do, and what skills they might have? This is very important; take your time. If – even after some research – you still have questions about something, it is fine to phone up, talk to the recruiter and ask questions.

Now you’re ready to begin writing. In putting together your application, you need to show the recruiter how your experience and skills answer those “statements for success” which you came up with earlier. This brings us to a second key aspect of a good application: evidence. Assertions of competence without evidence mean next to nothing. It may be wise to cite multiple pieces of evidence for key points. In doing so, you should emphasise achievements – that is, how your involvement has resulted in objective success – over lists of activities or skills. Experience and achievements from extra-curricular activities can be perfectly valid for a prospective employer. Of course, if you mention something in an application, you must be prepared to talk about it during an interview.

While thinking about success and evidence are the core of a good application, the tone of your application matters. A recruiter at a London bank may expect a different tone from an applicant than a recruiter at a San Francisco technology start-up. If in doubt, err on the side of a “professional” tone. A recruiter is likely to draw inferences about what matters to the applicant not only from what they write but also how they write it.

Often the recruiter will only have a few minutes to consider your application, so make your application easy to process. Unless you’ve good reasons not to, use conventional formatting, layouts and structures so that information is easy to find, and provide brief explanations for unfamiliar qualifications or unusual experience. And once you have done these things … STOP! Make it easy for the recruiter to evaluate your application by keeping it to the point. Since your primary objective at this stage is to be invited for interview, you only need to describe enough of your experience to capture the recruiter’s interest. To find out more they will have no choice but to invite you for that interview.

If you’re applying for many roles, or even to many different types of organisation, make sure your application is relevant to each role you apply for. This also applies to your CV and is especially true for academic versus industrial positions, because employers in these sectors are generally looking for different attributes. For example, publications are key for an academic role, but are unlikely to be of great interest to industrial recruiters.

A final word of warning: do not assume that an excellent degree from an excellent university is all you need. When it comes to the high-tech sector around Cambridge, most applicants will have similarly excellent academic qualifications and experience. Moreover, many recruiters will be looking for applicants who can achieve results by using a range of skills including their academic ones, rather than solve abstract academic problems. To use a sporting metaphor, academic qualifications and experience are like the set pieces in a game: they are important, but only part of the match. In many companies, there will not be many spaces in the team for expert placekickers. Most recruiters are looking for applicants that can demonstrate flexibility, deal with uncertainty and yet achieve the necessary results to be successful.

In a way, this is all obvious, but from reviewing thousands of CVs my experience is that applicants who take this advice to heart and put in the thought and time necessary to do a good job of it are rare. But they are also disproportionately likely to be asked to interview.

TO USE A SPORTING METAPHOR, ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE ARE LIKE THE SET PIECES IN A GAME: THEY ARE IMPORTANT, BUT ONLY PART OF THE MATCH.

p hoto C ourte S y o F ttp g roup

ttP group (www.ttp.com) has supported the Perse school’s means-tested bursary scheme since 2010 and has recently extended its support until 2024.