Six Common Errors to Avoid in your Return-to-Work Job Application

When you are applying for a job or a returner programme after a career break, you may be totally focused on crafting and perfecting your CV. At the other extreme, you may be aiming to quickly apply for as many opportunities as possible. If you’re in either camp, it’s easy to make simple mistakes that reduce your likelihood of success. Here are 6 common errors to avoid in your job application process.

1. Don’t apply too late

Don’t leave it to the last minute to apply. Sometimes adverts/applications close early because there has been a lot of interest, or the advert link breaks, or you have problems with your internet connection. If you leave it to the last minute, you may miss out!

2. But don’t apply too early

Don’t apply as soon as the advert opens. You need to make sure that you have tailored your application to the job/programme. You want your CV to be adapted to clearly show why you are a good candidate for this opportunity, and any cover letter to be specific about both your fit and your motivation to join this specific organisation.

3. Don’t neglect the detail

Ensure that you check for grammar, spelling, and consistency. Make sure that your layout is consistent across the document. Recruiters will view lack of attention to detail in your application poorly. Double check that your contact details are correct: typos in your phone number could result in you missing a call for interview!

4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help

Ask a friend or family member to proofread your CV and cover letter. It’s easy to miss your own errors. If you give your proofreader the job description, they can also check off the desired competencies, qualities, and skills against your CV, to highlight if you need to add more evidence.

5. Don’t send to the wrong person

If you are applying via email, double-check the email address for typos. If the job advert has a specific name to send your application to, ensure you are spelling it correctly. Avoid “Dear Sir or Madam” as this sounds very dated now. Instead you can use “Dear Hiring Manager”.

6. Don’t forget the attachments

Before sending your email, confirm that you have attached all the documents that are required. Have you been asked for a separate cover letter, proof of right to work, or other documents? Name these attachments in a professional and helpful way, for example YOUR_NAME_CV, YOUR_NAME_COVER LETTER.

Building a Winning CV

Victoria McLean, CEO of City CV, shared her advice on how to write a professional and effective CV in a recent free webinar for our Women Returners Professional Network. We’ve summarised some of her top tips below.

The Basics

  • The aim of your CV – to show employers and recruiters that you will meet their requirements. Your CV answers the question of whether and how you will deliver what they need.
  • The look and feel – aim for conservative, professional and corporate. Have consistent formatting and show attention to detail. You want a clean feel with white space, no logos or tables. Aim for 2 pages long.
  • The format – use a reverse chronological CV, rather than a functional skills-based CV. Recruiters prefer this format as they can understand your career history more easily.

Preparation

  • Prepare your Pitch – understand the ‘return on investment’ you bring to an employer. Showcase your expertise and strengths and include what’s unique about you.
  • Key Word Research – 80% of online job adverts on the open market use an Applicant Tracking System (ATS). The ATS typically does the first screen for recruiters, by matching applications that contain the desired key words to those sought in the job ad. While it’s reassuring to know that the majority of applications for returner programmes are screened by a human and not an ATS, you should still tailor your application to the role, being as specific as possible about mirroring the language required (e.g. Financial Accounting, Balance Sheet, Cashflow and Management, rather than ‘Accounts’).

CV Structure

  • Headline – when you’re returning to work, this should be your preferred job title. ‘Seeking …’ or ‘Candidate for a returner programme’ can also work well. Aim for a headline with presence and impact.
  • Summary/Profile – start with a bang. Your executive summary needs to capture the breadth of your sector experience and achievements, as relevant to the role you’re going for. Include relevant examples. This should hook the reader in and encourage them to read on.
  • Professional Experience – provide a brief organisational and role overview and ensure that you align the experience you highlight to that required in your target role. Demonstrate the arc of your progression and detail your remit and what you delivered. Where you can, include the size of projects, timeframes, budgets, global reach.
  • Showcase your Career Break in the following places:
    • Summary – the last sentence could read ‘Following career break, now seeking / looking for ….’
    • Professional Experience – Career Break (with dates). Include your career break to demonstrate that you qualify for returner programmes. Do include under Career Break any activities of a professional nature that you may have done while you were on your career break, if they’re relevant to the role you are applying for or give valuable transferable skills e.g. short term consultancy projects, running a home-based small business, senior volunteer work (eg. charity trustee)
    • Career Break activities – this is a stand-alone section after Professional Experience that captures other interesting experiences that provided transferable skills (e.g. project managing a relocation or house-build).
  • Interests – add in anything that has a WOW factor or is directly relevant to the role.
  • Qualifications and training – include succinct details on any degree, professional qualification and relevant professional development.

Overall, make sure you are showing your credibility to take on the role and aim to be differentiated to make yourself stand out from other candidates. Your CV should make an impression at first glance – it needs to pass the ‘5 second test’ and make the recruiter want to read on!

Your CV needs to showcase and align your professional experience to the results required in your target role, so do invest time in tailoring your CV to each role you apply for – it will reap dividends!

 

LinkedIn’s New Career Break Feature

In March 2022, LinkedIn launched a new feature to enable users to include a Career Break within the ‘Experience’ section of their LinkedIn profile. At Women Returners, we are really excited by this development, as it is a big step towards normalising career breaks and recognising that lives – and careers – don’t always go in straight lines. It helps us to tackle our mission to make extended career breaks a normal part of a 40 to 50 year career, removing the ‘Career Break Penalty’. And it helps our returner community to highlight some of the fantastic skills and experiences you have gained during this life stage.

LinkedIn’s Research on Career Breaks

LinkedIn carried out a global survey of 23,000 workers and 4,000 hiring managers. They found that 46% of hirers felt that candidates with career breaks are an untapped talent pool. This is huge progress compared with 2014 (when we started Women Returners) when career returners were largely invisible to recruiters. Further insights from their survey revealed that :

  • 64% of people wish there was a way to positively represent career breaks to hirers
  • 50% of hiring managers believe people returning from a career break have often gained valuable soft skills and 46% believe candidates undersell them
  • 74% of people who have taken a career break believe employers valued the skills they gained during it

Why should you add a Career Break section?

  1. By adding a career break to your ‘Experience’ section of your profile, you can easily explain your “CV gap” and address any potential concerns employers may have about what you were doing since your last role.
  2. It allows you to highlight experiences from during your break, with any relevant transferable skills you’ve gained. These may be skills from parenting or caring, or from other activities you’ve been involved with during your break. You may have run a small business from home or done some consulting for a friend or ex-colleague; been involved in skilled voluntary work such as being a Charity Treasurer or Trustee or a School Governor; organised a community-based activity like a children’s sports team; taken courses to upskill in your specialism or learn about something new; travelled or relocated, experiencing different cultures and learning a new language. Each and every experience contributes to the wealth of skills you can offer to a future employer.
  3. As employers running returnships or supported hiring programmes are explicitly looking for people who have taken a career break (usually a minimum of 18 months – 2 years), you can clearly show your eligibility for these programmes which provide such valuable supported routes back to work.

How to add a Career Break section?

To add this exciting new feature to your profile simply go to your profile, click on ‘Add section’ and ‘Add career break’. You’ll be cheered on by the message that greets you – ‘Experiences outside a linear career path can make people better colleagues, thought partners and leaders. Share these moments that make you unique’

You’ll be given the opportunity to add your career break dates and to include the reason for it if you feel comfortable doing so. There are 13 options including full-time parenting, caregiving, health, a gap year, bereavement and other life reasons. For a step-by-step guide see https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a597655

Now, there’s a reason to celebrate!

How do I explain the gap on my CV after a career break?

‘How do I explain the gap on my CV?’ is one of the most frequent questions we get asked. It’s a good question and one that causes many of our returners considerable angst. But, not anymore…

Victoria McLean, CEO of City CV, gives us her top tips for writing your return to work CV and making the most of LinkedIn. Here’s what she had to say before her session at our 2020 Conference:

Top Tip #1: Never undersell yourself on your CV

I feel a lot of people, women returners in particular, undersell themselves on their CV. It’s not about bragging, but a stand-out CV really needs to demonstrate the benefits you’ll bring to an employer. Your added-value needs to sing out from every line. Most people find that a bit daunting at first, especially after a career break when so many women forget just how great they are. My advice is – don’t panic, we’ll cover loads of ideas in the conference session.

There are several ways to turn a gap on your CV into a positive selling point – make sure to include all the relevant skills and experience you’ve acquired. I’ll talk about this in more depth at the conference. We’ll also be looking at how to hone in on those key strengths and skills. And, how to optimise your CV with key words to get past the Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

Top Tip #2: LinkedIn is a valuable tool

When it comes to LinkedIn, I feel very few people are really making the most of it. That’s a shame because it’s a valuable tool. Around 99% of recruiters use it to search for suitable candidates and to check you out before inviting you to interview.

It’s really worth investing in your LinkedIn profile because it’s not enough to just copy and paste your CV. LinkedIn requires a different approach; it’s less formal and more dynamic than a CV. And, as you’d expect from a search engine run by algorithms, key words play a massive role. Your LinkedIn summary is the most important part of your profile and it should set out your business case with keywords and using all of the 2,000 characters available. It’s really important to get the first two or three lines just right so recruiters are motivated to click ‘see more’.

Even if you’re completely new to LinkedIn, don’t worry. The conference session will boost your confidence and get you going in the right direction. If you’ve already got a LinkedIn profile but feel you could be doing more with it, we’ve got some ideas for that too.

 

 

Why your career break is a positive not a negative

There are lots of reasons for a career break – to care for young children or other relatives, for health reasons, to study, to travel or simply to recharge your batteries.


Far from being something to try to hide when you want to return to the workplace, there are very good reasons why you – and your potential employers – should celebrate your break.

We know from experience that returners re-enter the workplace with a fresh perspective, together with renewed energy and motivation. Employers value this too. At our Women Returners ‘Back to Your Future’ Conference 2019, O2’s Andrea Jones told the audience:

“There’s so much experience the returners have before their career break and they’ve gained so many skills on their career break. They come in with a really fresh pair of eyes….they can look at our processes and our systems and the ways we work quite differently. I think it’s a real breath of fresh air – and that’s what we hear from our managers.”

Other employers spoke about the enthusiasm of the returners they had hired, the fact that they are incredibly efficient as time management comes more naturally to them, and their desire to contribute more broadly to the organisation rather than just doing their job. Returners were also valued as role models for younger employees of people who had taken a non-traditional career path.

Dependent on the reason for your career break, you are also likely to have developed a variety of new skills. For example:

  • If you’ve taken time out to care for others you will have honed your communication, time-management and organisation skills. And nothing improves negotiation ability more than getting to a compromise with a teenager! 
  • If you’ve done skilled voluntary work you will have developed both teamwork and leadership skills – managing volunteers is much harder than paid staff.
  • If you were travelling or studying, this can signal an openness to experiences and a motivation to learn and develop. 
  • If your break was because of a personal trauma or health issue, you will have developed resilience and fortitude.

When writing your return-to-work CV and cover letter and preparing for interviews consider everything you’ve done during your break. Make sure the skills and experience you’ve acquired come across – they are an important part of who you are now. 

Switch your focus. Rather than seeing your career break as a negative to employers, focus on how it differentiates you and makes you a better employee,  gaining maturity, perspective and many new skills. You will be an asset to your next employer because of, not in spite of, your career break.

Sign up to our free network for more advice, support and job opportunities.You’ll find much more help and advice on our website.

Five tips for writing your back-to-work CV

The end of the holidays and the new school year will be with us in a few weeks. If that’s got you thinking about re-igniting your own career Victoria McLean, Founder and CEO of career consultancy City CV, has some tips to get your CV in great shape.

Returning to professional life can be daunting. But a career break should never hold you back. The first step in your back-to-work plan is to make sure you have a professional, targeted and compelling CV that highlights your relevant strengths, achievements and skills.

Here are my top tips for creating a CV that will convince prospective employers of your value to them:

1. Tailor your CV to your target role

Think about what the employer really needs. What skills are they looking for? Why would they pick you over potentially hundreds of other candidates? Be positive and make a list of your skills and achievements from previous roles and personal experiences that demonstrate you have what it takes to match their requirements.

2. Get up to speed on Applicant Tracking Systems

If you’ve been out of the job market for a while, you may not know about Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). These work like a search engine – scanning CVs for key words. If your CV is to get past the ATS and onto the desk of a real human, you need to identify the key words from the job description – and then use them.

3. Don’t start with a gap

Mention your career break, but keep it simple and lean. Include a short ‘Career Break’ section under your work experience, with dates, including any professionally-relevant activities such as skilled volunteering or a home-based business.

4. Cherry pick

It can be a challenge to distil a long or varied career into two pages. But, it is possible if you highlight exceptional projects, skills and experience that align with your target role. Facts and figures are a great way to reinforce your results and achievements.

5. Don’t forget about the six-second test

On average, recruiters take just six seconds to decide whether to reject a CV or read on – so it needs to be compelling. Would your current CV pass this test? If you’re not sure, sign up for our next CV webinar below.

 

Advice from Employers to Returners – How to Make Yourself Stand Out in CVs and Interviews

At our 2019 Women Returners ‘Back to Your Future’ Conference, Claire Cohen, Women’s Editor of The Telegraph, interviewed five of our employer sponsors who have experience of running successful returner programmes: Bloomberg, Credit Suisse, FDM Group, Fidelity International and O2.

Read some of the highlights on CV and interview advice from the panel’s responses below (and see our previous post on recognising your value too).
How can you write a great CV for a returner programme? “Make sure you bring out your career break on your CV – the experience that you’ve had and what you’ve done, the skills that you’ve learned. Some people leave this out and just put the dates in instead of explaining what they’ve done during that period.”

“Most people have amazing backgrounds. Demonstrate the skills you want the employer to see, bring those out with some real-life examples on your CV.”

“What I really look for is experience – make sure this is fully explained on your CV and at the interview as well, because the experience you bring is so different from other candidates and that’s what really sets you apart.”

“Put your career break front and centre of your CV. There’s no point in trying to hide it – why should you? It’s absolutely part of who you are and the experience you’re bringing to the role so draw that out at the beginning.”

“If you want an employer to give your CV time, to give you time, you need to put the time in yourself. Before you press the send button read it a second, third time and just make sure that it makes sense.”

How can you present yourself well during an interview?

“It’s very important to come to the table with what you are bringing to the organisation and not to focus on what you may not have, such as technical/digital skills.”

“Be prepared. When you go to that interview know your CV, know your skills and don’t dismiss the soft skills.”

“Articulate what your top strengths are – this can be powerful in an interview.” (see What’s your Unique Strengths Combination)

“Don’t define yourself by what you’ve done before. Think about transferable skills. Break down what you’ve done into elements that will help an employer understand what you bring to the table.”

“Try to be succinct. Articulate exactly what skills you bring.”

“Don’t undersell what you’ve been doing – a lot of people undersell what they’ve done during their supposed ‘time out’.”

Sign up to our free network for more advice, support and job opportunities.You’ll find much more help and advice on our website.

How best to use LinkedIn

Recently we spoke to Victoria McLean – CEO and founder of City CV – to find out the best way to optimise your Linkedin profile. But once you have followed Victoria’s excellent advice, what happens next? Do you know how to use LinkedIn to its full advantage?
We asked Victoria for some tips:
Connect with people – spend time making connections and growing your network. The more first-degree connections you make the more second and third-degree connections you will then have, which will increase your chances of coming up in searches. And, of course, building your network will encourage more people to connect with you directly.
Join LinkedIn groups – every region and industry sector have their own groups and they are a great way to increase your visibility and connect with people who may be able to help you achieve your goal. You’ll be able to raise your profile by posting and commenting in groups, and LinkedIn allows you to message other group members free of charge. So, if you see someone in a group you belong to who is already working in a job/area that appeals to you – or even someone who has hiring responsibilities – you can contact them for advice.
Join LinkedIn career groups – these groups are often set up by recruiters so that they can make potential candidates aware of roles they are recruiting for without having to use LinkedIn’s paid-for service. Use LinkedIn’s search engine to find these groups and join them so that you’ll be the first to hear about new opportunities – once you have optimised your LinkedIn profile, of course!
Use LinkedIn Jobs – you can search for vacancies by job title and location, state where you are in your job search and select what kind of role you are looking for – eg, full-time, part-time, contract etc. You can also set up alerts and save jobs that appeal to you. If you are interested in working for specific companies, you can also choose to receive alerts when they post new job vacancies. Your activity in LinkedIn Jobs is not made public.
Ask for recommendations and endorsements – recommendations are similar to testimonials or references and can be from former colleagues, bosses or clients – you just need to send someone you have worked with a friendly request to provide you with a recommendation. And when you have listed your key skills, you can ask first degree contacts to endorse these skills on your profile. Both testimonials and endorsements are a great way of validating your profile and showcasing your experience. If you’re nervous about asking for support in this way, why not offer to endorse the skills of others and provide them with testimonials if you can? More often than not they will offer to do the same for you.
Sharing content and posting blogs – sharing useful content or even posting blogs you have written yourself are great ways to increase your visibility and credibility. You could even set up your own LinkedIn group if you spot a gap and feel it would be useful for your job search/future career.
City CV will be running a LinkedIn Key Essentials workshop at our Women Returners ‘Back to Your Future’ Conference in London on 13 May. And a professional photographer will be taking LinkedIn headshots. These options are subject to availability, so if you are interested in either do book your Conference ticket now.

How to optimise your LinkedIn profile

Everyone knows how important it is to be on LinkedIn – it’s the top social media site for career and professional networking. And while most people do have a LinkedIn profile, it’s surprising how few know how to optimise their profile so they can maximise their chances of finding a role.

We spoke to Victoria McLean – CEO and founder of City CV – to find out what you need to do, as a returner, to make sure your LinkedIn profile becomes your hardworking ally on your return-to-work journey.

First of all, let’s understand why LinkedIn is so important when you’re looking to return to work after a career break or indeed for any subsequent job search. Well, here the stats are clear – and mind-blowing. Ninety-seven percent of recruiters/headhunters use LinkedIn as their primary way to source candidates; 85% of recruiters make their shortlist decisions based on LinkedIn alone and nearly 50% of engaged users of LinkedIn have hiring decision making authority.

“LinkedIn is your online marketing document. It’s your business case that needs to clearly demonstrate why you meet your future employer’s needs and why they should hire you,” says Victoria. “Your profile is all about strategically aligning you to your target role,” she adds. It’s used in every part of the recruitment process.”

Victoria recommends starting with a blank Word document so that you can strategically plan out, format and spell check your information before you put anything online.

Here are the steps she recommends you take:

1. Carry out a detailed keyword research. This is where you need to start. Create a list of key words and phrases (key skills, expertise, job titles etc) that a recruiter or a computer algorithm is likely to use to find candidates like you. The more keywords you have the better. It doesn’t matter if you’re saying the same thing in lots of different ways – make sure you cover all your bases. Once you have a comprehensive list, use it in every part of your profile so that you can be easily found. And remember – keyword breadth and density is important.

2. Create a killer profile. The first things a recruiter will see are your photo, name, headline and location so it’s super-important to get these right. Make sure you use a corporate-type photo – professionally shot, if possible. When it comes to your headline, LinkedIn’s default is to use your last job title, but you can change this and create a brief, powerful picture of who you are and what you have to offer. You have 120 characters so try to use all of them wisely. Make sure you include your industry (or target industry) in your headline to increase your chances of appearing in recruiters’ searches. For your location, it’s important to say where you want to work, not where you live. Recruiters screen by location and if you leave this out, or have the wrong location, you could miss out on a lot of opportunities.

3. Craft your summary. This is the most important and valuable part of your profile and it should set out your business case. Find a tone, style and level of detail that suits you, make sure it is keyword rich and use all the 2,000 characters available to you. It’s completely up to you whether you use the first or third person when writing your summary, although Victoria says she prefers to use the first person. It’s really important to get the first two or three lines spot on so that recruiters are motivated to click on ‘see more’. One way of making sure you have used all your keywords is to have a list of your specialities within your summary.

4. Talk about your experience. Make sure you use job titles that are searchable (eg Marketing Manager not Brand Warrior). And double check that your job titles and dates match those in your CV. Use the first person and bullet points or short paragraphs – enough to entice a recruiter to contact you – but don’t copy and paste from your CV. Focus on the most important information and go back far enough so that former colleagues can find you.

5. Fill in your education details. It’s important to add your university (and maybe school) details as you’re likely to receive 17x the messages you would get if you left this section blank.

6. Detail your skills and expertise. You can add up to 50 skills and areas of expertise. This section is an ideal opportunity to use your keywords to say the same thing in different ways (to maximise the chances of your profile coming up in searches). LinkedIn will guide you and suggest similar phrases. Input the skills needed for your target role, putting the most relevant ones first. See if you can get endorsed by your contacts for these keys skills as endorsed skills will appear at the top of the list.

Make your CV stand out: Use action verbs

If you’ve taken a long career break it could be many
years, and possibly even decades, since you last wrote a CV. Don’t just redo an old version, as CVs are now written in a very different way (see How to Write Your Post-Break CV).One of the major changes is the shift from talking about your past responsibilities to highlighting your achievements. Gone are the days
when simply describing your previous roles was enough to secure an interview. Now you need to explain what you achieved in previous jobs which made you stand out.

We suggest you aim for 3-5 bullet points for each of your previous roles (and for your career break if you have done any work/volunteering/studying or developed skills in other ways such as relocation).

Beginning your bullet point with an action verb is a great way to start off.



What are action verbs?

These are some examples:

 

achieved     completed     conducted     implemented    improved     negotiated
produced     secured        created         established       launched     developed
organised    revitalised     evaluated      restructured     simplified    drove

Why are action verbs important in your CV?

  • Action verbs describe your past achievements in a compelling way that highlights your strengths and suitability for the role you’re applying for.
  • Action verbs keep bullet points short – particularly important if you have lots of past experience and are trying to keep your CV to the recommended maximum two sides of A4. For example, ‘Delivered XYZ project on time and within budget’, reads better than ‘I was responsible for delivering XYZ project on time and within budget.’
  • Action verbs have more impact. They are specific, strong and powerful. If a recruiter has lots of CVs to sift through, action verbs make your achievements stand out. They also help if employers use applicant tracking software programmed to look for specific words to describe the experience needed for a role.
  • Action verbs help you to be specific in describing what the results of your actions were and how you achieved them.
  • Action verbs can highlight your relevant skills/competencies (see below)

Which action verbs should you use? 

  • Scan the job advert and job description, similar job ads in the same industry, and the company’s website to see which verbs they use. Describing your past experiences using these words will give you the best chance of making your CV fit the bill.
  • Look at this action verb list which groups action words by skills group. Think about which skills you want to demonstrate – again, matching this back to the skills/competencies asked for on the job advert
  • Don’t use the same action verb more than twice. Use an online thesaurus or the action verb list to avoid repetition and keep the recruiter’s interest.

Do read our other blogs How to Write Your Post-Break CV and Return to Work CV Tips for other advice on writing your back-to-work CV.

Sign up to our free network for more advice, support and job opportunities.

You’ll find much more help and advice on our website.