Today we have finished the hugest recruitment campaign I have ever done. In November we needed to fill FTE headcounts of 7, and in February another 14 headcounts had been opened. All of them were QA and testing related. The first challenge was to define the structure we filled, together with the required competences.
Then HR department released the campaign. It was interesting how the applicants came. In the first week a large bunch of people have applied. Many of them was far below the requirements, but we were able to hire some. Then a long and painful period came, when there was only a few people to look through, and meeting a good candidate was rare. But 3 weeks ago this turned to be a dumping again, and many good CV arrived. Now we filled all positions to that group with really good candidates.
I feel relief. In the last two weeks reading CVs was really a pain in the ass, and since I worked on this in the last two months so much, all of my other duties were starving.
Reading of CVs showed me something. When I read 20 a day, it seems that they are always the same. A person with no picture has finished some technical university few years ago, and worked in a firm for some years in testing and now wants to work here. When I read all the 20, I had to start again, because all of them were the same. There was only one who tried to use word-cloud in his CV, but unfortunately he was a Linux guy, who didn’t really know that there were other fonts than Courier New… So it was boring. I was really eager to see something different, something new, something innovative. I couldn’t.
Therfore I decided to develop a CV, which looks different. I collected the information I need to encapsulate:
- Identification and contact details
Normally it’s a headline with name, date of birth, call and e-mail address. How should it look like? I think there must be a picture with white background, it must look nice when it’s printed. It must show the contact details, but they can be written with small font size, even 8-9 of Tahoma.
How about a QR Code? It looks innovative, doesn’t it? Did you know, that QR code contains quite strong error correction, so you can add some graphics, logo or picture in the middle of that? Doesn’t that look nice?
If you have a webpage (like this) the QR code may open that. - Objective
This is always a collection of bullshits. How can it be more believeable? - Skills and abilities
This could be a word-cloud, BUT recruiters’ search engines cannot interpret pictures. So anything you display as a picture, you must enter somewhere. I would recommend to enter text with the same color as the background. This is invisible, but search engines catch them.
Language skills may be shown as a flag extended with the level you speak on. It must be visible b&w as well. - Education
This part is less interesting than work experience, but sometimes it’s important to show them in common timeline. With trainings and graduations we must spare the space, so infographics is more effective. If the school you atteded has good reputation and unique logo, use that. - Work experience
The work experience must be emphasised the most. I tried to create functional list of work experience, but I think recruiters prefer the timeline rather than functional angle. Success stories must be there. Company logos must be there (but which if there were 4 different name of the company in that 7 years?). This part consumes the 80% of the page. - Personal details
sometimes you want to share how many children you have. You may write ” I have 3 children” as all others do. Or, you may add an infographics showing a family of 3 children, and the childs wear t-shirts showing their date of born.
This is where I am now. I started to develop the CV based on the requirements above. I will show when I’m ready…
