María José Quirós Castillo has been with the Expat Spouses Initiative (ESI) team for more than a year. She moved from being a Talent in the Women for Women Eindhoven Edition X to working with the team. Her story is like many other internationals arriving in the region, but she has the advantage of understanding both sides of the table – talent and recruiter. María José will share her unique story as well as the top five CV mistakes she sees and how to avoid them.
Keen to restart her career in the Netherlands, Maria Jose jumped at the chance to join the Talent100 Edition III. She became a Talent in the Women for Women Eindhoven Edition X in March 2023 and credits the program with helping her adjust to professional life here:
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“The other day I was with a Talent, checking their CV and their LinkedIn profile link was wrong. If a recruiter opened it, it would go to another person. It seems basic, but it’s important that your contact information is accurate.” She also says to remove irrelevant information like age, nationality or marital status. “Without the right proper contact information, no one can do anything with a perfect CV.” When writing your CV, check and double-check that all the information included is 100% accurate and everything is spelled correctly. Use your word processors’ spell and grammar checks and have your CV reviewed by someone to help catch unnoticed mistakes.
Whenever you apply for a position, cater your CV to match the specific requirements of the position. “If you have a generic CV, you will receive a lot of rejections. Every time you apply to a role or a company, you must personalise the information in your CV. This is because of the ATS (Applicant Tracking System). You must adjust your job experience and add keywords that mirror the job description.”
There are many different ways to help you find the right key words such as a word cloud generator, key word finder, and AI chatbots, like ChatGPT. The easiest thing to do is to use the same words present in the job description in your motivational letter and CV.
“Because of the six seconds rule, it’s necessary to only have a one-page CV, for a junior mid or mid-level position or two pages for senior roles. The six second rule states that a recruiter spends just six seconds reading a CV. So, if you have five-page CV, a recruiter won’t read it all.” The best way to achieve this is to include only past employment experiences that directly relate to the tasks or requirements of the new position.
“In your job experience section, write down your information in a reversed chronological order where your most recent experience is on top. If you do it in the other way around, a recruiter will think whatever’s on top was your last experience, which could seem like you haven’t been working for a long time.” It’s okay if you have a career gap, just be prepared to talk about what you were doing while away from employment.
“More than just writing about what you did in any given role, your past work experiences should be written as achievements. You should use as many metrics or numbers as possible that can numerically highlight the quality your work had on your project, team, or organisation.” If you don’t have any metrics, think about your impact instead.