An interesting CV arrived in last week, something I had not seen before. At the bottom was a whole paragraph of tags, which the candidate was obviously hoping would be picked up by our database as it scanned the CV for key word skills. He CV would then show up in more searches which he then hoped would result in his CV being more visible to us and us calling him more often in relation to available opportunities. This is similar to “black-hat” webpage search optimisation which has since been discovered by Google. People would hide a multitude of keywords in the background text on their website, often in the same colour as the background itself (say white words on a white background which would be picked up by the search bot). Needless to say, this did not look very good on the CV and didn’t strike me as being hugely professional, for someone  that had a lot of experience.

In a market like this for the informed job-seeker, the process is very much 2-way. A consultant who receives a lot of CVs and traffic may not have time to call you immediately in relation to any new jobs. A great way to stay on top of things is to be proactive, and technology can help here. I would advise all people actively searching for jobs to join us on Facebook, Twitter and especially subscribe to our RSS jobs feed. In this way you are notified as soon as a new job is posted, and the candidate can therefore call in to the consultant, something which is far more time-efficient.

1 final tip while we’re on the subject – do NOT apply to more than 2 positions with any particular company / recruitment agency. It looks unprofessional and will only damage any application you make more than enhance it. It’s better to compose a personal email to the consultant listing the positions you believe you are suited to. Better still is calling the consultant after you have made an application to get more detail on the various other roles available, in this way you can quickly figure out how many companies you would like your CV to go to. In a company setting, most companies have talented in-house recruiters who will know if your background is suited to a different role they have on offer, and will present these to you if they wish to speak to you. Making more than once application simply presents more admin work for all parties involved and this reflects badly.

-Brian (brian dot c at lifescience dot ie)