Selecting the right people to go abroad is difficult enough. But how do you build up the right candidate pool? A new survey suggests that Curriculum Vitae's today may not be worth the paper they are written on.

The overuse of stock phrases amongst job applicants is in danger of rendering the modern CV meaningless, according to new survey findings from Stopgap, a leading recruitment consultant in the marketing sector.

The survey results show that job applicants in Britain are simply parroting back the criteria that the employers themselves have already defined in job advertisements. There is a high correlation between the assets sought and listed by employers in their job advertisements and the assets claimed by applicants in their CVs. This leads to employers being deluged by CVs from applicants relying on established clichés to market themselves and hence, ironically, failing to help them stand out from the crowd.

Claire Owen, Managing Director of Stopgap, says, "Given that communication skills are rated as the most important skill in the marketing industry by employers and applicants alike, the fact that neither of these groups are making the most of their opportunity to communicate with the other is frustrating. Applicants are missing the opportunity to sell their real strengths by falling back on platitudes.

"Employers encourage this trend - making their own recruitment process significantly harder, as well as wasting time and advertising spend - by putting out tired clichés, rather than more challenging job specs tailored to the true demands of the role. Employers should also outline the cultural identity of their company, thus attracting those candidates not only with the correct skills set for the job, but with the correct character fit for the company."

Platitudes aside, the survey identifies another potential pitfall for applicants, as more and more CVs are full of superfluous information. Over two-thirds of CVs contain information on what individuals get up to in their spare time. More often than not, these activities fail to differentiate applicants as the same interests, namely sports and travel, appear time after time. In addition, 40 percent of CVs include information on basic IT skills such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and 15 percent of individuals feel that their grasp of email and the internet is a personal selling point.

Owen continues, "At Stopgap, we see CVs from thousands of job applicants each month. Many of these CVs are of negligible help either to the candidate they represent, or to the employer who is trying to assess their calibre.

Top 10 CV clichés percentages 1. Communications Skills 35 2. Team Player 28 3. Project Management Skills 27 4. Results orientated 25 5. People Management Skills 24 6. Creative 23 7. Meet deadline 22 8. Motivated 21 9. Thrive on challenges 20 10. Organisational skills 17 Top 10 job ad stock phrases percentages 1. Communication Skills 41 2. People Management Skills 35 3. Creative 30 4. Strategic 23 5. Project Management Skills 22 6. Team Player 19 7. Commercial Knowledge 19 8. Leadership Skills 18 9. Negotiation Skills 18 10. Analytical 17

"Information on IT skills and leisure pursuits are of secondary interest to a potential employer, and should only be included if they illustrate attributes which will add value in a relation to the job role. For example, leading a mountaineering trip would indicate motivation, leadership and strategic thinking. However, citing "sports and travel" as personal interests give little extra insight into the candidate in question, and will not differentiate them substantially from thousands of others.

So what should candidates seek to demonstrate through their CVs? Owen advises, "We'd encourage applicants to bin the jargon and get personal! They need to take time to consider the demands of the role for which they are applying and then focus their CV on evidencing relevant assets to that position. By using examples of past experience - work-based or otherwise – to testify to their aptitude for the job, applicants will put themselves in a much stronger position to stand out from their peers.

Owen also suggests that employers need to revisit the way that they profile job opportunities in order to attract people with appropriate skills. "To simply reel off a list of skills required for the job is to waste advertising spend. It actively encourages applicants to revise their CVs to incorporate those skills, whether in their possession or not. We call on employers to have the courage to break away from stock phrases and really focus on the job position that they are marketing.

"Rather than reeling off a profile of their "dream candidate", they need to detail the demands of the role, leaving the onus with the applicant to come up with the facts to prove they possess the requisite skills for the job. This will put an end to the abuse of stock phrases and lead to the receipt of far more enlightening CVs.

"Furthermore, when employers are describing the role in question, they should use the opportunity to place it in the wider context of the company as a whole. It is vital that employers recruit not only the candidate with the correct skills set, but with the right cultural fit for that company, using the company values as guidelines."

September 2004

Reprinted with the permission of onrec.com