CV Development for PMO Professionals

Module Three – Your Personal Summary

Hi, welcome back to the third module.

This time we’re focusing on the CV itself. Starting with the personal summary.

The very top of your CV should feature your name; your phone number; email address and the city or town that you live in. These details are enough and ones that you should feel comfortable to share with others throughout the recruitment process. There is no need for a full address; date of birth; driving licence etc.

Underneath your name is one of the two most important areas of your CV. The personal summary is the place which catches the attention of the reader.

The second most important area is the career history and we’ll pick up on that in the next module.

Let’s get started with a personal summary.

Personal Summary

The personal summary is a great place to set the scene for the rest of the CV

It’s surprising just how many people waste the opportunity to write a great introduction to the CV – you don’t need to be a great wordsmith, you just need to put yourself in the shoes of the person reading the CV.

Think about it for a minute, recruiters spend a lot of time reading CVs, they can receive hundreds of applications for each role so they use recruitment software that enables them to shortlist those applications based on keywords within them and they’re trained to skim read those shortlisted CVs.

With this in mind, we know that our CV has to contain the right kind of keywords plus it has to be concise, factual and easy to read.

The personal summary is a great place to do just that.

Take a look at this opening line from a personal summary for a real PMO CV:

With experience of project co-ordination and administration from my employment experiences I have developed good communication and organisational skills.

And another example of an opening line:

Efficient, conscientious and organised, with project management and support experience. Excellent communication skills, developed in busy environments.

When I see personal summaries like this I see a wasted opportunity.

Those opening sentences could be used to describe hundreds of different people – there is nothing unique or individual to the person at all. These openings are also lacking in any kind of keywords and both of them give very little insight into who this person is; what they do and what they’re looking for in their next role.

The Personal Summary Formula

When we have just precious seconds to catch the attention of the reader we have to give it our best shot and we want to convey our unique selling points (USPs) in the clearest way we can.

We’ve created a formula to help you think about your own USP.

Remember, you’ve already done a lot of this thinking in the last module, now we’re going to put it together in the personal summary.

Here’s the formula:

PM Accreditation + Role + Domain/Function + Sector + Years Experience + Specialisms.

Here’s an example:

APMP and P3O qualified Programme Co-ordinator / PMO Analyst with over ten years of experience within HR, IT, financial services and retail sectors. Focused on supporting programme and project level activity, highly experienced in MI reporting; finances and resource management.

Let’s break it down:

The accreditations are the obvious part – the APMP and P3O.
There are a couple of job titles there because we want to hit the right kind of keyword search. Your current title might be a Programme Co-ordinator however recruiters might be searching for ‘PMO’ explicitly so we need to include that.
The domain/function relates to the area of the business, so in this case, HR and IT. IT can be both an industry sector and a domain.
Then there are the industry sectors you’ve previously worked in.
Finally, a few of the top specialisms you have. This is a great place to change and tailor your CV depending on the role you’re applying for.

Listen to the Video

In this 30 minute video you can get more detail on creating your personal summary using the formula:

The CV Template

We have a CV template which you can use as you develop your CV during the sessions.

This CV template works for a number of reasons:

Plenty of white space makes it easy to read.
It’s simple – no tables or fussy formatting.
It works fine when uploaded to recruitment databases.

You’ll notice it has a section near the top called ‘Objective’. This section is used when you’re trying to make it clear what you are looking to achieve or obtain in your next role. They tend to be used if you’re looking for a career change; looking to work in a location different to your home location, or entering the employment after a break.

[Download the CV Template]