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Hi all,

first of all, this is a great community!

A little background if I may, if you just want the question, I've put it at the bottom in bold.

I'm one year into being a manager (12 year career with the company, down a technical path). I stepped up 18 months ago wanting to kick start my career and asked an old manager and high person at the company for advise - and was offered a great opportunity in another country.

I've listened to ALL the podcasts so far after finding the site 6 months ago, I believe I found a link after researching GTD, and last week purchased the Interview series - all great by the way!

 I've been told I'm a natural leader, people want to be inspired and motivated by me, on the flip side I need to believe in myself - I'm a natural "I" (DISC), I graduated in Engineering and now work in the Digital arena for a major global company. I've adopted the regular 1:1's, delegation, feedback techniques and these really help me. I think a main factor in my success in management so far is because I have drive and passion about what I'm doing and this is infectious to my team.

Back to the point of the Post:

My current manager is now moving on to lead another of our teams in another country and although a lot earlier than expected I am applying for the role.

I tweaked my CV and put together an application and although my manager cant guide me too much on this has said that his manager (the person I asked about kick starting my career in the first place) knows all my successes and achievements already and what he would recommend is to consider my target audience, be bold and sell a vision of the future and how I would impact that - so I've changed the application - I have a mentor within the company and will be asking them to review and hopefully I'm going down the right lines.

What he has also said is although my CV is good and concise, it does not tell them much about me as a person. His manager likes real people who show their personal side as well, so I need to inject some personality into my CV.

How would you put personality into your CV? I’m finding this difficult – I started adding one extra paragraph near the top, but it just feels out on a limb. I do have personality, I have a significant group of very valuable great friends, been best man 3 times, travel when I can, put myself into things whole heartedly (sports, etc) and am very sociable

Question
How would you put personality into your CV?

Any thoughts or advice about this question or any of the above would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

ADV

 

rwwh's picture
Licensee BadgeTraining Badge

I would say the MT philosophy is that all that is important is behavior, not attitude or personality. And your CV should document your past behavior.

wendii's picture
Admin Role Badge

CVs (at least in the everyday use of the word) are summaries of your experience and accomplishments. They do have personality - I can predict what someone will be like from their CV, but I've had a lot of practice! It's like seeing someone's car or their suit or their desk - people don't deliberately give them personality they just absorb their owners' personality.

Are you sure what he wants is a CV and not a proposal? A one page summary of what you see as the top 3 problems and their solutions or the top 3 opportunities and how you would capitalize them would seem more useful and impactful than giving your CV a metaphorical clown suit.

Wendii

thaGUma's picture

The CV is reduced to it's core meaning when well crafted. Each word is carefully considered. 'Drove' instead of 'led'. 'I' not 'we'. If your CV doesnt reveal your character then perhaps the words are wrong.

Chris

adv_uk's picture

Thanks for your replies.

I've tweaked my CV a little more and would say that does demonstrate my achievements and past behaviour effectively and the words I have chosen are important, but it could be just too formal for this position - which sounds bizarre I know.

My line manager and his manager are fully aware of what I've done so far, which is why I think he wants me to show something a little more about me in there and  to focus my application on what my vision is of the future - so that they can picture me in the role, see how I understand current initiatives and how I would want to shape the area and take us in that direction and how this fits with the bigger picture.

This role would be a big step for me and I have the skills and passion to do this well and I need to sell this. It seems that the higher you get, the more people are more interested in you as a person and past achievements speak for themselves - especially when applying for a role within an area you work in already.

thanks again