Making a CV For Pakistan Job Market
Importance of Professional Resume Writing Services in Pakistan
Hiring a professional resume writer in Pakistan is still an unpopular approach when it comes to make your CV. Ironically when you consider the importance of your resume, it’s simply astonishing to see how people take it too lightly when it comes to making a CV..
The CV writing service or resume writing service in Pakistan is gaining traction now with a lot of people using internet. Although in Pakistan, the trend for getting your resume written by an expert or through a CV writing service is not popular, but throughout the world there are big businesses that run exclusive CV and resume writing services. This should give you an idea about its importance.
The problem with Pakistani market for CV is that people are very reluctant to pay the price for professional CV writing because since college days they were given the old advice of getting it copied paste and this plays a huge part in young people not landing interview calls. After a deeper study we can conclude that this kind of mentality is not developed because of the society or the general street talk advice. There is a huge issue at the university and college level, who have no set program for people getting a masters or a bachelor’s degree to advise them on how to take on the job market.
One key workshop in the final degree allocation should be as to how to land a job, what tools are needed and how to approach the employment horizon. Sadly this is missing from every curriculum in Pakistan’s universities.
I was recently invited by one of the most reputed job site in Pakistan to host as a career advisor in the recent Job Fair in Karachi, Pakistan, and I met nearly 40 people personally, and apart from one of the candidates 39 of them had a very bad resume, it was a clear case of copy paste with each one of them. So the only advise I gave them was to re-do their CV, even at the expense of paying for a CV writing service or paying a professional CV writer, the dividends will be unlimited.
The key reason why people have a bad resume or CV is quite simple, they make or try to make a CV initially to get by, and when they do land a job than people think that they are the best judge of how their CV should look like, this is the Inside-out approach as I like to call it, and it rarely works.
The secret to writing an excellent resume or CV is quite a simple one and based on common sense, special emphasis on common: “You have to write a CV according to the needs, requirements and mentality of the HR departments and recruiters alike”. There it is as simple as that. But come to think of it, if it is as simple as that then why everyone or most of the working professionals are not doing exactly that?
Answer to this problem is again very simple: Not everyone understands HR personnel and not everyone is a recruiter. So what should a simple Saleem do in such a situation?
Well, as a beginner the first thing which I would recommend is to study the CV’s and try to understand what a CV basically is? It is quite simple a breakdown of your personal details, your qualifications and academic details and finally your work or job related experience; these are the three major components of a CV. Although from this it sounds that CV writing is a pretty simple thing, but believe me it is a highly intricate and deeply complex task. Because people normally think they can define themselves or put their achievements into perspective, but communication as we all know Is the commodity of kings, and we all know how rare kings are. Not everyone can be a king and the same goes for CV writing, not everyone can be a good CV writer.
Nevertheless, let’s get back to what a CV basically is and how its parts are involved in making a whole document.
The first aspect which we will discuss is the length of a CV in Pakistan. You should first ensure that you make every word count, opinions differ on length, but one to two pages are usually enough for mid-career professionals and 3 or maybe even 4 is reasonable for people with more than 15 – 20+ years of experience . If you are seeking a managerial, professional, or technical position and have at least 10 years of experience, two pages is the norm.
In most cases, a busy hiring manager will not read all of a CV that is longer than two or three pages. Short CVs are often more problematic to draft than longer ones; but when you do them properly, they can pay off. If you can’t get everything on one page without crowding, you are better off going onto a second page. Just be sure that you fill at least two thirds of the second page. You can use a bigger point size, narrower margins, and more spacing between sections to expand your text to fill the second page.
Studies and numerous surveys have attested to the fact that most HR guys and recruiters sift through a CV or a resume in only 10 to 20 seconds! The more needless words you include in your CV, the more likely it is that the significant information won’t get read at all. So, keep your resume short and concise. Next aspect of discussion is the personal details area.
While CV writing services can help you a lot in getting your CV done, you have to ensure that you provide your essential details accurately, an employer is more likely to phone or e-mail you than to contact you by mail, so giving an employer this contact information is important. Use a phone number that will be answered throughout your job search. Most people use their cell phone number so that they won’t miss a call.
After that main area of personal details job objective or summary of your profile is normally the first thing to put on your CV or to begin your CV with. Although you could put together a simple resume or CV without knowing your job objective, it is wise to have one in mind. Doing so enables you to select CV content that directly supports your candidacy for the job you want.
In a more advanced version of your CV, you might include a Summary of Qualifications section instead of an objective statement. For now, the objective will help you focus your thinking and create a targeted resume.
Finally the work experience and your education should be equally highlighted, and this is a very intricate process, you can see many resumes and CV’s where education is at the top or it’s at the bottom, this is because there is no international standard for a CV or a resume.
The same thing goes with your work profile, if you open a thousand CV’s you will find a thousand different tangled documents with highly strange formats and methodologies of presenting data.
The best thing to do in these situations is to either take out a few days and try to make the best CV you can, for this you have to be familiar with word processing software’s and some design tools as well, or you can always invest in your own self and hire a professional CV writing service, this trend is catching up fast as now we are seeing many people opting for these services and getting the benefit from them. The logic behind getting a CV or Resume writing service is pretty simple, they are experts at what they do, it is their daily job and they have mastered the profession. They know how to best present you on a piece of paper and at the same time play with the minds of HR departments and personnel recruiters.
So finally in the end, the advice which I give to everyone is to hire a professional CV writing service in Pakistan, and you will not be disappointed.
This article is written by the Head of HR of a bank as a guest writer for ProfessionalcCV.pk