Is CV registration the way to go?

The truth about CV registration

Visit any job board or recruitment consultancy website worth its salt and you will be given the option to “register with us”. Now if you are thinking this is going to be your ticket to kicking back and waiting for the job of your dreams to come and find you, you many need to think again.

Let me tell you about how it worked in my company. Once you register your CV, you are added to a database. You’re in good company because every candidate we’ve ever received a CV from is too. In fact the sheer size of our database is one of the things we use when we are trying to tell our potential clients just how good we are (Obviously we don’t mention that some of these CV’s are over 10 years old!).

But where do you fit in, I hear you ask. Well, when we had a vacancy looking for a specific skill set, or location we could run a search on this database and identify potential candidates who may be suitable for the vacancy. So if you are one of these, congratulations, you can expect to receive a call! However, if you aren’t, or you don’t know how to use CV power words in a way that will have you picked out on a database search, or if we have had a lot of applicants to the ad we placed online and really don’t feel like searching through our tired old database; then you wont get the call I’m afraid. Now do they sound like good odds to you?

I know; it would be great if CV registration worked. Hey sometimes it does, but not often enough for you to gamble your career on it. I guess its called a job hunt for a reason. You have to be very good, or very lucky as a hunter if you think that the prize will just fall into your lap while you go about your business.

If you want the job, the onus is on you

You knew that already really. Maybe the job search is uncomfortable, but those who get ahead are the people who do what others won’t do. If you want your career on your terms, you have to take responsibility for your career management, that starts with how you conduct your job search. The advantage of this is that as you do so you are already setting yourself apart from the field! Lord only knows how many people are passively searching (an oxymoron surely, are they searching or not??!) perhaps this is why they are all unsatisfied. Once you decide to get proactive, you get more responsibility, and more control over the outcome. Doesn’t that sound like the better deal? If you are going to gamble, back yourself.

So take responsibility for your job search. Learn how to write an effective CV that gets noticed and you wont have to worry about CV registration and hoping against hope to be picked out!

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