Career Services for Business- & IT-Professionals

Recruiters and hiring managers in specialist management expect perfect application documents from you. They expect you to be able to present yourself professionally and to show off your skills. If you are not able to do this, you will be considered unprofessional and your chances will be considerably reduced. And you are expected to have informed yourself about which documents you have to present, how they have to be structured in terms of content. Creating a perfect CV is more difficult than generally assumed for three reasons.

  • 01 Differences in professional and educational stations

    While European, especially German recruiters expect you to list all stations, including periods of non-employment, social services, military service, sabbaticals etc. to the exact month, recruiters of a US company expect exactly the opposite.

    A typical US resume used to apply to US companies (or their European branches) is skills-oriented. It contains only those professional and educational backgrounds that are relevant to the position sought. An US resume must fit on one page.

    However, if you apply to a US educational institution with a typical US resume, you have already lost. While US companies expect a typical one-pager resume, educational institutions expect a detailed curriculum vitae, including books, publications and awards.

  • If you apply to a company from the UK (or its EU branch) with a CV without references, you significantly reduce your chances. References are mandatory when applying to UK companies. In the UK, HR managers do not value testimonials. They want to use references to inform themselves about the applicants.

  • While recruiters in the EU and especially in Germany expect you to provide detailed personal data, recruiters in the Anglo-Saxon-speaking world expect exactly the opposite.

    German recruiters expect an exact address, date of birth and information on nationality, marital status including details of children. A photo is also welcome in a German CV, but not required.

    None of this should appear in a US resume, a US CV or a CV applying to a UK company (or its European branch).

Capture data once and use it multiple times

A perfect Curriculum Vitae with RecruiterCloud

The RecruiterCloud makes CV creation very easy. You enter your data once in German and English and use it several times in all CV versions.

Once you have entered everything, you will then receive either

  • a detailed CV with references for applications to UK companies
  • a detailed German CV (optionally with or without picture) for applications to German companies
  • an EU EUROPASS for applications to companies in the European Union
  • a typical one-page US resume for applications to US companies

You can choose between the multi-page version or the one-pager version if you only have a few professional or training stations. Just try it out and see which version looks better. If you have few stations, you can describe the respective stations in more detail so that the one pager is not half filled.

As a general rule, a CV should never be longer than 3 pages! Curricula vitae with 8, 9 or even 10 pages are completely out of place if, in addition to the information that belongs in a CV, they also contain a project list and a detailed skills profile. Therefore: Always include the competence profile and the project list as separate documents.

Present competences perfectly with a separate competence profile

Your Competence Profile

Due to the space required, competences can only be presented in rudimentary form in the CV. Therefore: Always provide a separate competence profile in addition to the CV. There is enough space in the competency profile to provide detailed information on each competency. You do not have this space in the CV, where the competences should only be presented as headings.

RecruiterCloud divides your competences into three areas.

  • Professional competences
  • Professional industry experience
  • Functional and disciplinary leadership experience

Once you have recorded your competences, they appear in the competence profile (incl. details), the professional competences also in some CV types (only as a heading with a short rating but without details). So you only need to record once for the competences as well.

Industry and management experience are not shown in the CVs because both are derived from the professional stations.

Present your project experience perfectly - with a separate project list

Your Project List

Many consultants cannot resist the urge to overload their CVs with a presentation of their projects. This is unprofessional because recruiters have to slog through six, seven or more pages just to get a rough overview.

Recruiters are also pressed for time. They want to know in one or two minutes whether a candidate is at all suitable for a position or not. A short CV is the best way to do this. Therefore, as a consultant, always provide a separate project list in addition to the CV and the competence profile.

In RecruiterCloud, in addition to the general information (when, how long, at which company), you can also describe in detail,

  • which tasks, which role you had in the respective project
  • which tools, methods etc. you have used

WThose who have many years of consulting experience also have a long project list. However, no specialist manager wants to slog through countless projects that are irrelevant to the task at hand.

Therefore, you must individually adapt the project list to the respective application situation.

But you certainly don't have the desire or time to keep deleting projects and re-entering them for the next application. RecruiterCloud solves this problem by allowing you to set projects to inactive before creating the list.