According to Office for National Statistics, the employment rate in the United Kingdom was estimated at 75.8%, higher than for a year earlier and the highest since comparable estimates. However, even with such positive statistics, due to extreme competition in the labour market, a lot of effort will have to be made in order to find a job worth one’s experience and expectations.
Slavinskas and D. Graužinis, founders of the career platform Wozber, claim that the shortage of qualified professionals is one of the most significant problems that companies in the United Kingdom face. “One of the reasons why companies do not reach the desired talent and why job seekers do not get the jobs they want, lies in the poorly presented information about a candidate in a CV and a cover letter. They are the key documents, determining whether you will be invited to a job interview”, says T. Slavinskas.
Try to View Your CV as a Targeted Ad
As January accelerates, many of us look at the New Year for a fresh start, therefore, job search is always intensified in January and February. Tomas, founder of Wozber, with years of experience in the labour market, tells us that his own personal story has been an inspiration for a new product creation: “After graduating University in 2013, I was looking for a job. After the first rather painful and unsuccessful attempt, I wanted to find out how to present myself to receive employers’ attention.
After thorough research, I managed to craft my own formula of what I felt employers were looking for in job applications. After doing so, I chose top 10 companies and rewrote my CV for each of one of them as a targeted job application, highlighting my experiences that would be most relevant to each of the companies. I then received 8 job interview invitations and after attending them all – 6 job offers. While gaining my experience in a new role, I was still intuitively developing the idea of a new service. As a result, we introduced the first version of the smart job application platform back in August 2015.”
Tomas advises that when the time comes to look for a new job, it’s essential to make your CV a clear match to the requirements of the job you’re applying for. Even if this might seem like an obvious thing to do, many people usually write generic CVs without using the keywords the employer is looking for. “There’s not much doubt that employers will compare your CV with the requirements of the job posting. If the candidate clearly meets the requirements, there is a high chance of being invited to a job interview.
Adapting a CV for a job posting is one of the most important things in a job search. This is particularly applicable when applying to large companies that generally use Applicant Tracking Systems. Such systems automatically reject job applications that do not meet the requirements of the job posting.
To facilitate the process of adapting CVs, we have developed an automatic job posting analysis on our platform as well. When job requirements from a job ad are copied, Wozber automatically analyses the text and selects the keywords that should be used in your CV.”, says T. Slavinskas.
A Good CV Design Will Help to Enhance Your Experience
Most of job seekers probably recall the moment when many different CV design templates have to be tried out before choosing the one to be actually used. Furthermore, with a variety of articles on the Internet that suggest conflicting recommendations what to use and what to avoid, it’s easy to get lost. Even if you happen to find a good-looking template, reformatting and aligning are inevitable as you will need to adapt it to your own experience. Therefore, such tool as Wozber is a way to overcoming the long and tedious creation of a job application.
“Minimalistic, modern CVs are preferred amongst most of the employers. We can confirm such information, since thousands of users have created job applications using our platform, and many of them were willing to share whether they succeeded in getting jobs they wanted. Therefore, we definitely noticed that more job offers come for those whose CVs not overloaded with unnecessary graphics and details, where information is laid out clearly.”, says D. Graužinis, co-founder of Wozber.
Artificial intelligence can help in the creation of CV
With the increasing influence of the Artificial Intelligence and the 4th Industrial Revolution, there is also a rising number of innovative methods that facilitate various processes for both job seekers and employers. An overload of information on the Internet makes it difficult to choose what is effective and things, such as design mistakes or repetitive grammatical errors in CVs are just a few of the problems that technology can help solve.
Currently used artificial intelligence and algorithms can increase your chances of success by helping you present yourself the right way. “We have created a virtual CV expert, which will share relevant tips and recommendations how to optimise your content, according to the information you provide in your CV. For example, if you outline that you are the most successful sales professional, the Wozber Guide will ask you if you can provide specific performance indicators to adjust your statement.
Even though this functionality is very useful, I wouldn’t call it as artificial intelligence. I view statements that the artificial intelligence is able to write the best cover letters after accumulating all the data on Google or other search engines as something that is yet to come. Anyway, we are definitely progressing and people need less and less time and effort to create high-quality job applications.”, says Wozber founder T. Slavinskas.
Both startup founders reassure that the most important thing is to tailor each CV to a specific job posting, selecting a minimalistic template, and presenting your experience with specific examples. “Even graduating from world’s top universities, students face the challenge of getting employed in a competitive job market. Our platform has been used by students from over 300 universities around the world and those who have really focused not only on gaining experience, but also on presenting the experience in a structured way, have landed the best jobs.”, summarise the creators of the career platform.
