CVs

Young graduates: should you really try the original CV?

Young graduates: should you really try the original CV? When you are a young graduate, it is tempting to compensate for your lack of experience by sending an original CV. An initiative generally appreciated by recruiters… Provided you don’t go too far and respect certain codes.

“It all depends on the sector, the profession, and the person to whom we are speaking, warns first of all Sébastien Canard, associate director at Opensourcing. You have to be in tune with the profession you are aiming for: make an original CV in graphic design, communication or marketing, but not necessarily in banking or accounting. “As regards the recipient, Marielle Lassarat, career path manager at EM Normandie, illustrates: “sending an original CV to an operational person, a communication director, for example, can be well seen. If you are applying via a recruitment firm, on the other hand, you should favour a CV that facilitates sourcing and quick reading. Unless he specializes in trades where originality is relevant.

Take technical constraints into account

“An original CV is useless if no one sees it! recalls Marielle Lassarat. Before you start, ask yourself the question of the technical limitations of the format. Because if special software is needed to read your CV, the recruiter may not be able to open it. To avoid this, stick with Word or PDF documents, the great classics. It is also a question of referencing: on the web, your CV must stand out in Google results, and on job boards, and this will not be the case if the format does not allow the search engine to identify the keywords. Similarly, “some decide to create their CV in colour… but recruiters print it in black and white”, warns Marielle Lassarat.

Truly show originality

Bad luck: CVs from Facebook, Twitter, Google, or the Metro map, it’s already done! No question of doing the same thing again, since the whole point of the original CV is to stand out from the crowd. Sébastien Canard comments: “the idea is brilliant for whoever has it! But for a creative, in other words, a profile for which an original CV is interesting, doing the same thing again denotes a lack of creativity”. Before jumping into your concept, take a look around the web to see if it has already been used. Sites like DoYouBuzz, allow you to create your CV on the net.

Prioritize substance over form

Too many candidates are banking everything on an outstanding layout or their storytelling skills. A mistake, according to the founder of the recruitment firm Elaee Claire Romanet: “form is not everything, you still have to work on the substance. There is a message to send.” The message is composed of the position targeted and the skills that correspond to it: if this information is not found in the CV, the recruiter will deduce that your originality is only window dressing and will move on to a CV that may be more classic, but has the merit of being informative. Marielle Lassarat also notes that “  students sometimes make the mistake of not including everything in their CV because they are afraid of not knowing what to say in an interview. The risk is then not to be called for an interview

Avoid bad tastes

A candidate sent her underwear with her CV, another made a video to apply to a famous studio, forgetting to ask for the rights to the images included in his editing. Typically the kind of thing to avoid! Use common sense and “don’t push the envelope too far”, reminds Claire Romanet.

If in doubt, abstain

“If you decide to make an original CV, you really have to do it flawlessly”, according to Sébastien Canard. If spelling and typing errors are to be banned regardless of the type of CV, this is all the more true in the case of an original CV, which will be scrutinized and analyzed with an extremely critical eye. To maximize your chances, Claire Romanet advises possibly to “make a classic CV which can be used on social networks and, in this CV, to put a link to a site, a blog, or even an Instagram page where you can this time offer more creative things. In this way, it does not serve the classic form. Only an interested person will follow the link, so risk-taking is minimal.”

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