Making your CV hit the mark
03Sep
By Detail2Group @ Sep 3, 2010
in Retail Management Recruitment
There are a million different guides out there for how to write a good CV. As recruiters one of the best bits of advice we can offer you is to include key commercial information on your CV.
The reality is, employers often have to review a large amount of applications for each individual role. It's therefore important that you get across key information that will help your CV stand out from other more generic less detailed CV's and therefore give you every chance of making the shortlist.
Too often people fail to include fact, figures, key achievements in each role and instead put the generic information that is not particularly useful to the reader.
We see this at all levels of management not just at junior management level and many people fail to effectively sell their experience.
Example - if you're a Store Manager for a High Street Fashion Retailer, a good recruiter will understand the key components of your day to day role. What they're really interested to know is:
If you're not able to specifiy figures such as store turnover for confidentiality reasons, simply put a different flip on this. If you can't detail revenue figures, instead put detail around percentage growth e.g you could put down achieved 5% like for like sales growth across the year.
Also apply these tips to your specific role. If you're an assistant manager and have limited P&L / financial experience, apply this principle as far as you're able to. It might be that your KPI's are less financial (e.g. you could detail mystery customer results and achievements, detail additional responsibilities you've been given over and above what's expected in your role), detail what you can as the key point is to show you have a commercial grasp of your role and are KPI and target minded.
Whilst you want to keep your CV to a managebale size, it is more impactful to sacrifice some of the 'generic' information and replace this with commercial information that focuses around your performance and achievements in each role.
Visit our resource centre for detailed advice around making your next Retail Management career move.
The reality is, employers often have to review a large amount of applications for each individual role. It's therefore important that you get across key information that will help your CV stand out from other more generic less detailed CV's and therefore give you every chance of making the shortlist.
Too often people fail to include fact, figures, key achievements in each role and instead put the generic information that is not particularly useful to the reader.
We see this at all levels of management not just at junior management level and many people fail to effectively sell their experience.
Example - if you're a Store Manager for a High Street Fashion Retailer, a good recruiter will understand the key components of your day to day role. What they're really interested to know is:
Facts & Figures:
- Store Turnover (additional KPI's where possible e.g. labour cost percentage, Gross Profit percentage etc.)
- Business performance (where is your store converting against budget, how did your store perform last year, detail other KPI's / measurables)
- Size of Store (square footage)
- Size of Team (if you're not the store manager how many people report into you)
- Financial Achievements (e.g. sales growth, increased profitability, cost reduction, any achievement on the area (e.g. most profitable store), over-achievement of KPI's).
- People Management related achievements (e.g. staff development, specifics around people you've progressed through the management structure, incentives you've put in place, staff retention etc.)
If you're not able to specifiy figures such as store turnover for confidentiality reasons, simply put a different flip on this. If you can't detail revenue figures, instead put detail around percentage growth e.g you could put down achieved 5% like for like sales growth across the year.
Also apply these tips to your specific role. If you're an assistant manager and have limited P&L / financial experience, apply this principle as far as you're able to. It might be that your KPI's are less financial (e.g. you could detail mystery customer results and achievements, detail additional responsibilities you've been given over and above what's expected in your role), detail what you can as the key point is to show you have a commercial grasp of your role and are KPI and target minded.
Whilst you want to keep your CV to a managebale size, it is more impactful to sacrifice some of the 'generic' information and replace this with commercial information that focuses around your performance and achievements in each role.
Visit our resource centre for detailed advice around making your next Retail Management career move.
