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How to write the world’s best change management CV ever. Probably. Part I.

You are a management consultant or interim consultant. You are senior, experienced and you've got a lot of knowledge. You have written documents for work before. You have had to sell yourself to a prospective client or employer before….. so a CV is easy to write, right? Wrong. Your CV needs to be many things: informative, relevant, concise, accurate, easy to read, memorable, and be able to persuade someone to interview you. If you need any more convincing that CVs are taken way more seriously than before, take a look at these; http://www.businessinsider.com/insanely-creative-resumes-2011-6?op= So, if a CV has to perform like that, this is how to write the best change management CV you can. In Part I, we look at what to say. Part II deals with how to say it. This is a list of what you will need to cover / include (Don’t worry about the format for now, just make sure you have this information). • Name (with qualifications attached if appropriate) • Contact number(s), (mobile and land line) • Academic qualifications (with the most advanced first) • Professional qualifications / training courses • Extra-curricular information (2-3 bullets on mentoring, sports coaching, charity work) • Personal details (email address, residency / any visa requirements) • Executive summary (you can do this after you’ve seen an example, if you like) • Career highlights, 3 paragraphs (you can see an example before you give it a go) • Testimonials (2 glowing reports of how fabulous you are, lifted from LinkedIn or similar) In addition, the trickier bit, your employment history. • Employer names • Dates of employment (consistent with LinkedIn and any employment reference check, be

accurate!) • Corporate bio, explaining who your employer is, what they do, how big they are, and if

appropriate what their stock exchange ticker code is. (There is an example later on) • Project / Program Title: Objective: a snappy one-liner that explains what your program is

expected to achieve (normally cost reduction, risk / regulatory mitigation or increased productivity). Please be specific, e.g. Widget program, designed to reduce costs by £3M per annum within 18 months of program end

• Resources: time, budget, people and third party / technical resources list. E.g. 18 months, £1.5M, 4 project managers, 3 business analysts, 1 tester, ad hoc support from external supplier vendor

• Narrative: this is what’s probably on your CV already, but it’s a paragraph or three on what you actually did

• Results and learning: what the program actually achieved, any remediation required to achieve it and what you learned from delivering it.

Don’t worry about the formatting, just get the information ready. Here’s a sneak peak at what the employment section of your CV will start to look like, post formatting.

               

                       

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Employer: Widget Financial Service Inc.

Current: Program Director

Dates: April 1999 – Feb 2000

Widget FS Inc. is a global financial services company with annual revenue of $100Bn (2000), operating in over 20 countries, employing over 100,000 staff. NASDAQ WFS.

Program: Global Regulatory Reform

Objective: To combine several regulatory mandates in to a unified regulatory reform delivery, reducing cost by 50% (£6M saving) of separate regulatory programs and to harmonise delivery dates (Dec 1999).

Resources: 9 months, £6M, 12 project staff (PMs and BAs), consulting support from ACME Consulting.

(Narrative, but you don’t label it, just write it!) Waxing lyrical about what you actually did to contribute or lead this program or project, including scoping, analysis, planning, execution, hiring, managing stakeholders, budgets etc....1 – 3 paragraphs.

Result: Delivered 3 months post-original schedule, £200k over original budget. The extra time and resources were spent on remediating under-par support from the external vendor and were inserted before the end of the program. The business is now on track to save £3M per annum without negatively impacting production - an ROI of x.

Starting to look okay isn’t it.

This needs to be done for every program or project of change you have done. Don't worry about the length of your CV at this stage, it can be very long and that's okay. This is the 'kitchen sink' version. The good news is it's quite easy to write, as you don't have to edit yourself, just do a 'career dump'. Make sure you have all the information, so you can end up repeating the above format, when you come to Part II.

               

                       

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How to write the world’s best change management CV ever. Probably. Part II. So let’s turn to how you say it. This is where you really tighten up your CV and make it a winner.

Below is the whole format and the location for all the information you have assembled.

               

                       

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Ok, so we're getting there, it’s really taking shape. It has all the useful stuff on it, including some testimonials and something unique about you.

Now, under no circumstances share this CV with a prospective employer. It's far too long.

I like to think of this CV as your “Master Copy”. Every time you do something, add it to your CV and make it longer. But never, share it with a prospective employer. So, if you're not sharing it with an employer, why did you write it? Well, it is from this Master Copy of your CV that all future CVs will be produced. However, they will be much shorter and highly relevant to the prospective job.

               

                       

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When applying for a job, read the job description, strip out the skills, experience that the employer says is important / relevant, and then condense all of your CV to match. Every project or program on your CV that is not directly relevant to this particular role, however useful and interesting per se, reduce it to one or two lines, like this.

Example.

Program: Global Regulatory Reform

Objective: to combine several regulatory mandates into a unified regulatory reform delivery.

Resources: 9 months, £6M, 12 project staff (PMs and BAs), external consulting support from ACME Consulting

Result: the business is now on track to save £3M per annum without negatively impacting production - an ROI of x.

Every project or program that is relevant, leave it as is. Your CV should now be two to three sides. Any longer and you are either the perfect candidate who has not done anything irrelevant to the job you are applying for or you need to condense it further. Remember, only the most relevant stuff.

Now your CV is really performing.

I know it took a bit of writing, but you never need write another CV again, you've done them all. You just condense the Master Copy in reference to the relevant job each time.

So, what about the CV you send to a recruiter? I suggest this - send the Master Copy to them, but make sure it's a read only .pdf file and it has a great big red watermark across it 'Not for distribution'. That way the recruiter can read it, assess your relevance to a role, but can't 'accidentally' send it anywhere without your permission. If the recruiter has a genuine role, you can use the job description or notes from the recruiter to condense your CV in a relevant way.

Nice work on your CV by the way.

For further information and a confidential discussion of your needs, please contact our Partner: Johnny Walker Direct Line: 020 7489 6400 Email: Johnny@cmcresourcing.com Web: www.cmcresourcing.com