Hi,

Personally, as a (ex-)recruiting manager, I would not like to receive a CV output from Career Manager. Rather than the "realm of the IET adding anything" it would come across to me that the applicant hasn't thought about personalising their CV, and has relied on a third party tool to do it. After all, the IET isn't endorsing anything that's on there which is all that would add value - they can't because they don't know that what you've entered into CM is true.

However, certainly taking the text out and then reformatting it could be useful to you (if only to remind you what you've done!) rather than completely rewriting it all over again.

Key thing is to remember that for roles which attract a lot of applicants it really is true that recruiting managers spend literally seconds on the first pass read of CVs (I have sorted through 200 CVs for a single post before, you don't have time to spend long filtering out as many as you can to get to the ones that might be worth reading in detail) - CVs must be clear, personal, and if possible targeted to the role. They need to be a sales pitch - not just a list of what you've done.

Ok, I've just tried the "Download Master CV" function In CM for my own entries. As a consultant or contractor tendering for work, to back up my tender, it would be ok. For giving to a recruitment agency who are acting for me, so that they could develop my CV, it would be ok (ish). As a job applicant I'd suggest that 99.9% of the time it would go straight into the "reject" pile.

Good question!

Andy

Hi Andy, thank you for the detailed response. I'm pretty new to the IET and CM, so I appreciate the perspective from someone who knows CVs!

I'm building my profile in Career Manager and updating my CV, so I thought "could they be compatible?". I guess not, because like you say, CVs should be tailored for each application.

And also most CV advice (and I'd agree having had to work with them a lot) would say that they should start with a summary of who you are and what you do, which the CM format doesn't give you at all. Again like a sales leaflet for something like a car - the top needs to tell you what it is and what's special about it so you can decide whether it might be what you are looking for, you only look at the "tech specs" (which is what's in CM) later on.

But at least doing them at the same time you're going to be using a lot of the same words, so there should be lots of copy and paste to save you time!

And also most CV advice (and I'd agree having had to work with them a lot) would say that they should start with a summary of who you are and what you do, which the CM format doesn't give you at all. Again like a sales leaflet for something like a car - the top needs to tell you what it is and what's special about it so you can decide whether it might be what you are looking for, you only look at the "tech specs" (which is what's in CM) later on.

But at least doing them at the same time you're going to be using a lot of the same words, so there should be lots of copy and paste to save you time!

Thanks Andy, that's a great way to think about it. I appreciate your input.

Yes, I really dislike the Career Manager CV output. Its nowhere near fit for purpose. Hopefully someone from the career manager team reads this thread one day.

First, and most annoying, it doesn't download in an easily editable format. It downloads as a pdf. It should download in an easily editable format at least. OK, you might have to pay for MS Word exports, but an (x)html output should be quite feasible.

Secondly, it contains more information then needed and is a pain to tailor (see that not editable issue again). Depending on where I target it, my CV is between one page and two pages long - that is as someone with 25+ years of experience. My boss who is more experienced than me has their CV tailored to a page. Most of the content on the IET CV is all the training courses I've logged into the tool over the years - you don't want that on a CV. Its not made clear if deleting them removes them just from the CV or from the rest of career manager as well.

As an aside here, I have a general CV that is longer which I would send to a recruiter (although I try to avoid them), but if I go for a role it will be tailored to that role.

Thirdly, IET logo - really? OK for IET Staff, but never otherwise

Fourthly, surely it should mention I'm CEng MIET?

The use of tables makes it a little hard on the eyes. You are aiming that someone can extract the key information from your CV quickly as they won't want to spend much time that initial skim.

Mark