I have worked as a headhunter for over 25 years and have seen thousands of CVs. I have also read more books on the subject than is strictly necessary. The honest conclusion is this: show the same CV to 100 different people and you will get 100 different opinions. The subjectivity is irreducible.
What the research does tell us is that CV submissions alone lead to a job offer in fewer than 1% of cases. CVs matter far less than most people think. The covering letter is more important for graduates; networking is more important for experienced professionals; and for senior hires, the CV often arrives late in the process, written by the search firm rather than the candidate. And yet a weak CV can still cost you an opportunity. The goal, then, is not perfection: it is avoiding the mistakes that screen you out before the conversation begins.
Here, in order of importance, are the principles that make the biggest difference.
The one-versus-many debate resolves itself more easily than most people expect. Have both.
Structure the first page as a standalone document: name and contact details, education, professional qualifications, and a summary employment history giving dates, company names, and job titles only. Then use the following pages for the same employment history in full, adding the substance that the summary page deliberately omits. Keep the total to three pages or fewer. Name and page number (‘Page 1 of 3’) should appear in the header and footer on every page, in case pages become separated.
For most people in asset management, where careers tend to follow a broadly linear path, a traditional chronological CV works well: education first, then employment history in reverse order.
A skills-based CV leads with transferable competencies and places employment history lightly at the end. It is worth considering if your career has significant gaps, changes of direction, or if you are moving into a substantially different role. The trade-off is that it requires more customisation: the skills you highlight need to be matched to the specific role, and a generic version rarely works.
This is where most CVs fall short. Listing all the responsibilities of each role is both the most common approach and the least interesting thing you can tell a prospective employer. Responsibilities are what you are paid to do. They describe the job, not the person.
What headhunters and hiring managers actually want to know is what you achieved. In any role, there are usually two or three things that, if done well, determine whether the person in that seat succeeds or fails. Focus on those. One or two achievements per role is plenty, three at most. Leave out the rest.
When you record an achievement, quantify it. ‘Increased sales despite difficult trading conditions’ tells the reader almost nothing. ‘Increased net sales revenues 150%, from £400k to £800k, despite difficult trading conditions, contributing to a 60% increase in profits between 2008 and 2009’ tells them a great deal.
This point deserves particular emphasis for anyone working in investment management. Asset managers spend their professional lives quantifying performance, yet a striking number fail to apply the same discipline to their own CVs.
If you manage funds, a hiring manager needs to know the size of assets under management, the number of funds, the client type (Institutional, Retail, or both), the performance target, and the actual performance over one, three, and five years. Net fund flows matter too: a fund that has been consistently attracting assets tells a different story from one that has been bleeding them. Without this data, it is very difficult to assess the quality of a track record.
A practical suggestion: at the end of each calendar year, take twenty minutes to record the key figures for that year in a master document. Data that is recent and in memory is easy to note down; once it is gone, it is often difficult to reconstruct accurately.
Your CV is not a brochure listing every feature of the product. It is a sales pitch for a specific buyer.
Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling makes the point that effective sales conversations address all and only the features which meet the buyer’s expressed needs. The same logic applies here: include the responsibilities and achievements that are relevant to the specific role; reduce the rest to a line, or omit them entirely.
In practice, this means you will need different versions of your CV for different types of role. The master document is for your own reference. The version you send out should be tailored each time. It is more work, but it makes the document far more compelling to read.
Font size between 10 and 12 point; a clear typeface; judicious use of bold and italic to guide the eye to the key facts; reverse chronological order throughout. Spell-check, then read it again, then ask someone else to read it. Any error that survives this process will do disproportionate damage to the application.
One point specific to this sector: do not include a photograph. Research by Jim Bright and Joanne Earl, whose book Brilliant CV remains the most evidence-based guide to CV writing, found that a photograph is more likely to harm an application than help it.
If you would like a headhunter’s perspective on how your CV is likely to read, please contact us at hello@godliman.com.
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