Reset your job search and revitalise your CV

The start of the year always brings promises of new beginnings, either from a personal or professional stand point. If 2023 marks the start of the search for a new role – or you have been looking for a while without the success you were hoping for – then now might be a good time to revisit your CV and make sure it’s showing you in the best light.

While there is no such thing as the perfect CV, the one we tend to recommend at Career Evolution, is using the STAR approach. STAR is an acronym for Situation, Task, Action and Result – a process that is often recommended to be used to answer interview questions about past employment, but can also be easily transferred into a way of setting out your CV. Using STAR allows you to demonstrate your practical aptitude for the role, with examples of how you have surmounted challenges and approached your work in similar arenas in the past. It’s a great way to show what you are capable of and how you have used your skillset in specific situations.

Using STAR in CVs

The four-part STAR process can easily be applied to CV writing. Before you begin, look at the job description and the requirements the potential employer is looking for. Think about how well suited you are to the role and see whether your CV can be tweaked to show your skills for the role. Think too about instances in your own career where you have shined. Instances that show how you have used your key skills, intuition and experience to address challenges that would be applicable in the role you are seeking.

Then use the STAR methodology in the skills section of your CV. Choose three or four key skills that are essential to the role that you’d like to showcase and create some written responses around them in the STAR style – imagine you’re answering interview questions about yourself and write your responses down. So instead of simply listing out your skills in the workplace, you create a series of bullet points, with illustrative examples.

Demonstrating value

Many people looking for new positions find that STAR allows them to demonstrate their value in real terms, in real-life situations. It also allows you to go into a few specifics of detail, with the context of the details clearly outlined – for example, rather than simply noting ‘good team worker’ demonstrate how you work well within a team.

If you think this practical approach may be beneficial to you, have a go yourself. Choose one of your past job situations and create a STAR analysis of the salient points where you were successful in the role, following the STAR subheadings process. Candidates using the STAR method find this linear approach gives them focus and structure when pulling their CV together, to create a body of writing that both reflects their experiences but will also be attractive to potential employers.