Someone once sent me a CV by email. The email read:

"Dear (company name)
Please see my generic CV
Yours
Bob Smith"

Now I got a lot of CVs over email - to the extent that I had a standard text saved that I tweaked depending on the type of applicant. So I sent him a response saying:

"Dear Bob
Please see my generic response
Yours
Dave"

...and simply paste my standard text underneath.

Not at all satisfying or a constructive use of time for either of us. The point is that we all like to be treated as individuals that matter. Although from Bob's point of view he was sending an email to a company, it is received by an individual. As I felt he had put no effort into sending me his CV, I spent no effort on the response (which included not being bothered to read his CV)

The way to show people they matter to you (with CVs) is to customise them. This has the added benefit of maximising the ease with which the person receiving your CV can tick off their requirements on the first 15 second skim and be bothered to read more in depth, maybe even have you in for a chat.

The other reason it is important to customise is that it takes effort and people will see that it has taken effort. As your CV is the only thing they will know of you, people will assume that the manner in which you sent in your CV is the same way that you approach life and work. Thus if you send in a careless CV with little effort put in, they will assume you are careless and put little effort in - and not many people want to employ people like that

However, for all that it takes effort, there are certain key techniques that will enable you to successfully customise.

The very first thing you need to do, of course, is to find out something about what the organisation might want from you. This could be simple, or it could be harder...

If there is an advert for a specific job. Adverts attract a lot of responses, so the best advice is to only both responding at all if you think you can match every single one of their requirements. Responding on the off-chance is what everyone else is doing and that's why organisations that advertise get swamped with poorly matched, general CVs that don't obviously fit all the requirements asked for in the advert. So save your time and save them time and only respond if you fit everything.

The way to respond to an advert is to answer all the requirements in the covering letter in list format. First, identify all the requirements from the advert, list them in your letter, and against each requirement, tell them why and how you meet that requirement. Use the same formulas that you used for key skills and employment achievements, setting each response out as either:

action - how? - [optional: why and result]

what you did - specific detail - beneficial result for the organisation

If there is not a specific job, just a specific organisation If you sending a CV speculatively to an organisation without responding to a specific, published advert, then the need to customise is even greater. This is because it is likely that the organisation you are sending your details to gets a lot of unsolicited applications. A speculative CV is like advertising - either you have to show it to a very large number of people and hope that some of them figure out the connection to their needs, or you have to really focus a message to a smaller audience you think already have needs you can fulfil.

Because you cannot easily broadcast your CV to many people (uptake might be 1 in 200 connections). Thus, the speculative CVs that work are focussed, and show that you have thought how you could answer their needs. So again, although you don't have an advert to go on, the first step is to identify a list of needs. At first this can sound daunting, but it is simpler than you think - what job are you going for? Consultant - you need consultancy skills (communication, rapport,analysis, business development). Their website will often tell you all you need to know - from something deep in their work-for-us pages like their corporate values, to the way in which they describe what they do on the front page. If they say their main difference in the market is the depth of their analysis, you want to be sure to answer the need for deep analysis and show off your analysis skills and achievements in your CV. So either-way (advert or not) you will have created a list of needs and answered them in list form in the covering letter.

Of course if you're not applying for a specific job or organisation (e.g. sending a CV into an agency) then that is what your general CV is for - simply use that.

Further customising A good way to get the recruiter to see that you are worth further investigation is to use their language. If they refer to 'personnel', change your references to 'HR' to read 'personnel'. That way you send the signal that you 'fit-in' with them. If they ask for project team management experience, specifically mention the words 'project team' when you refer to how well you 'managed' them. It may look clunky, obvious or even stilted, but for the person at the other end it makes it easier for them and they will be grateful enough to consider you in much more depth.

In the covering letter you also need to cover why you want to the job, or why you want to work for that organisation. Employers are looking to minimise risk - employing people is expensive, time-consuming and a general hassle - they don't want to have to repeat it in a hurry, so they want to be sure you're going to hang around. Answer this concern by telling them why you want to work for them - what is it about them that fits with your future (your CV can only tell them about your past) - are you now ready for the next challenge, want to work locally, or looking to downsize as you have a young family? Use the covering letter to tell your story.

After the covering letter has answered the obvious needs, the CV then becomes the place where your prospective employer looks for evidence to support your assertions in the covering letter. Incredible as it may seem, most CV readers will attach a lot of reliability to a well-written CV (despite the fact that you could have written whatever you wanted). Thus, in the CV ensure that *all* of the points that you identified as requirements are covered.

The way to ensure these points are covered is first to check they are all there and then to make them as visible as possible. At least one of your key skill categories must match something significant about the job, and you need to change the order to make sure it is at the top. If you're going for a project manager job, then your first key skills heading needs to say 'project management' - if you didn't already have some key skills down that would immediately fit into the category, then you probably shouldn't be going for the job.

Go through the employment part of your CV as well, making sure that the achievements most relevant to the job are at the top of the list of achievements for each job you had. once the order is sorted, also make sure that you are mimicking their language as much as possible throughout the CV.

There's no such thing as being too obvious - I have seen CVs where the applicant put the key experience I asked for in bold. This makes my life easier, and it also shows them to be someone who is considerate of my needs - which sounds like someone easy to work with. Demonstrating an attitude like that they are a shoe-in for an interview as long as they fulfil the basic requirements.

So that's it: a simply customised CV. It takes time, which is why most people don't bother, and why the customised ones have such a positive impact. However it doesn't take as much time as you think. A useful time-saver is to save each CV as a different version - last time I changed jobs I applied to 32 organisations, so I have a directory with 32 CVs in. This means that if I have another business analyst job to apply for and I've already applied for three, that I have very little work left to do - I can just tweak an existing one to match their language (the needs will probably be the same or similar).

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