Preparing A Winning CV

Preparing a Winning CV

A CV plays a critical role in your search for career opportunities. A well prepared CV can get you an opportunity to attend an interview. Prospective job seekers need to note that a good CV alone is not enough to get you a job. You will need to perform well in other stages of the selection process especially in the interview and in some cases psychometric assessments.

Your CV gives a prospective employer the first opportunity to look at your profile. It summarizes of your profile (personal details, education and experience).  The first thing you need to decide on is the length of your CV. Prospective job applicants have the mistaken belief that a very long CV is what employers are looking for. The whole purpose of your CV is to get you an interview. The rest you can explain in the interview. We recommend a CV of not more than there pages for very senior people. For less experienced individual a one page CV will even do.

The first thing to put on your CV is your personal details. While employers are not supposed to decide suitability of a candidate on the strength of personal details such as age, gender etc. It’s never the less important to have this information. A CV missing this kind of information is as bad a CV that does not show the name of the candidate. Employers normally will treat an omission of this critical personal information as lack of attention to detail. I normally get questions related to whether the CV must have a cover page or not. The issue of a cover page is an issue of personal preference. However if you decide to have a cover page do not over decorate the cover page. CVs with cover pages over decorated put off prospective employers. A CV decorated like a birthday party or kitchen party invitation cards can be viewed a lack of seriousness on the part of the applicant.

When putting educational qualifications always start with the highest qualification you hold. Recent graduates it’s important to indicate grades of each subject taken under each program you studied. At entry level employers tend to use qualifications a lot when selecting candidates. Employers prefer candidates with good grades that is why it is important to indicate this on your CV. Don’t forget to put the overall degree or Diploma class. Sometimes we get people submitting CVs that do not show the institution that awarded them their qualifications. It’s critical to have this information on your CV. Also indicate the period the qualification was attained. All this information helps employers decide on whether to call you for an interview or not. More experienced candidates need only to indicate their qualifications, degree class, awarding institution, and the period the qualification was attained. For more experienced people it’s not important to start listing the subjects undertaken under each degree or diploma program.

When putting your experience start with your most recent or your current employment.  Prospective employers would like to know what you have covered or accomplished with each of the employers in summary. Please do not copy what is written on job descriptions as it is too generic. You must show things that you have done under each job you have occupied. It’s important to highlight major achievements under each of the jobs you occupied in your career.

How do you deal with gaps when you where not formally employed? The honest truth is that there is a general negative perception especially of people who left formal employment who now want to get back into formal employment. That perception will take a lot time to go away. Employers are worried genuinely so by what these candidates where doing their long period of “self imposed layoff”. We are all aware of how difficult it was in the past 6 years to be in formal employment and be able to survive without doing something of your won in addition to formal employment.  My advice to those prospective candidates who find themselves in this situation is to tell the truth. Indicate the period you were self employed and briefly explain what type of business you were into. The longer the time you were out of formal employment the longer it will take for employers to start accepting you. The bottom line with regards to experience is that you should not leave unexplained gaps in your experience record. 

Some candidates prefer to explain why they had to leave their employment to join a new employer.  It is better to omit the explanations in your CV and leave this to the time when you are called for an interview. Those doing interviews normally will ask you to explain why you left employment.

When preparing your CV it’s important to check the font you are using to prepare your CV. The CV must be readable.  Your CV headline must be in upper case and the rest of the headings must be in title case. Never write the whole CV in upper case. A number of people struggle to read long documents written in upper case. If the employer is serious they will not call you for an interview if your whole CV is written in upper case.

Is it important to put your picture on your CV? I see a lot of people putting their passport size photos on their CVs. While how you look is not a factor in selecting people for jobs an unattractive photo can put off the person looking at your CV. I would advise you to leave the photo out for that particular reason. Some of the photos we see are like those photos you find on the police wanted list.

Are the companies you have worked for critical in a search for employment?. This is one factor that prospective candidates take for granted. You must choose whom you work for carefully. There some employer brands bad brands in the market to such an extent that some employers will through your CV in the bin.  Employers brands publicly know for corruption and bad publicity are not good for your CV.  You must aim to have on your CV some of the top brands. Being a top employer brand is not an issue of the size of the organisation but an issue of reputation especially on how employees are treated. Organisations that struggle to pay staff and are often in the press for the wrong reasons are dangerous brands to put on your CV.

What about issues of salaries when you are called for an interview? Some people are so desperate for a job that they would take anything. Whatever you ask as salary must be in line with what you are capable of contributing. No serious employer will pay you a market related salary when you have not yet contributed a single cent.  Go into an organisation with the aim to create value for the employer so that you can be recognized.  Some of the salaries  prospective candidates ask for are not found in this market and even in the region.

One sure way of not getting a job is the lack of computer skills. If you are unemployed or you are employed and you do not know how to use a computer and the most commons computer packages go to school right away. You will not get a job without those skills unless you are looking for manual work somewhere on the road construction projects. If you want to be in an office you must know how to use the internet, email, PowerPoint, excel and word. If you have these skills you also broaden your job search methods as most the employment agencies now have online job databases where you would need to register.

If you want to learn more about how to prepare a winning CV please go to our facebook page by searching for “Industrial Psychology Consultants” and become a fan of the page. We have a video on how to prepare a winning CV. Our next video  will be on how to pass an interview. If you are not on facebook you can upload your CV on our website: www.ipcconsultants.com . If you would like to receive daily job updates on email send me an email on mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com with the caption “subscribe to job alerts”.

Memory Nguwi is the Managing Consultant of Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting firm. Phone 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number 0772 356 361 or email: mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com

Productivity Linked Wage/Remuneration Model for Zimbabwe

Productivity Linked Wage/Remuneration Model for Zimbabwe

The topic of productivity measurement in Zimbabwe has been under discussion for as long as 25 years now. Government, Employers’ associations and Labour unions at some stage discussed this very important topic. However up to now no concrete framework is in place to implement this model which I think is the best for an economy such as ours. The lack of progress is partly due to the lack of coordination by the social partners and lack of know-how on the practical implementation of such a model.

During the period of hyperinflation Human Resources Practitioners were very innovative when it came to remuneration. At the time when the country was going through an unprecedented economic decline characterized by hyper-inflation, many new and innovative ways of rewarding employees were found that helped companies survive. These included paying people using fuel coupons and groceries. After the introduction of the multicurrency system some leading companies moved quickly to adopt the Total Cost to Company Model. The more cautious and less responsive remained on the old system which they are struggling to maintain now. It will be even more costly to near impossible to implement the total costs to company model 2 years from now because employees will be so much used to the old model to the extent that they will not want to change. Management of most organisations on the old system are also not willing to move to the new more sustainable model simply because they are afraid of affecting their own personal interests as they are currently benefiting from this old system.

Given the fact that most organisations are struggling to pay decent salaries it is imperative that social partners; government, labour and employers work together and come up with a national sustainable remuneration model. Ultimately if this is not done now a number of organisations will close shop due to unsustainable salaries and wages. Should this be allowed to continue, a lot of people will lose jobs and this scenario is not ideal.

The first step in developing such a system is to come up with the right legislative framework. With the current system at NEC, it is almost impossible to set salaries using productivity figures. The NEC is a grouping of competitors and there is no way they are going to share strategic information at that level in order to set salaries. As a result the NEC’s are “talk-shops” when it comes to real wage issues linked to productivity. This is the same reason why these groupings are obsessed with “Poverty Datum Line” or PDL linked wages which have never been implemented anywhere in the developing world. They have also tried to link wages to inflation; this is understandable but it is not the whole picture.

Companies need to link wages to productivity. One way of ensuring that companies in the same industry share information of strategic nature such as the data required in productivity measurement calculations is to set up an independent statutory body at industry level or national level to collect such information without disclosing the identities of participants. Currently the way NEC’s are operating is like a father who buys the same size of shoes for his sons or daughters regardless of their actual size. There is so much variability in company productivity that it is impractical to give uniform salaries increases to the whole industry.  The current NEC setup also punishes those companies already paying above NEC recommended minimums especially when they recommend salary adjustments on actuals instead of minimums. A number of companies have now simply stopped internal Works Council driven salary negotiations because they are afraid of being chocked by the mandatory NEC adjustment. Our situation demands that salary negotiations be done at company level through the Works Council. This approach takes into consideration individual company circumstances instead of the NEC system which looks at nothing else except inflation and the PDL. Inflation and the PDL do not show company or national economy growth/performance. The current NEC system therefor only looks at the cost side to the employee.

Once the above huddles have been resolved there is need for immense education at all levels on the pillars and importance of productivity measurement. One common and misleading notion currently pervading the Zimbabwe economy is that production equals productivity. This is not correct. You can produce as many units or tons of your products and still remain unproductive. The simple definition of productivity is output divided by inputs. Production which is just the output excluding growth in inputs is therefore misleading when used as an indicator of the company’s performance. Employees normally want to be rewarded on the basis of units produced and most senior managers know that this is not sustainable.

The other misconception on company of performance is that profitability equals productivity. There are so many companies that are very profitable but not productive. It is important to note that profitability equals to productivity plus price recovery. My estimates are that profitability in 80% of Zimbabwean companies is driven by price recovery instead of productivity. Depending on price recovery for profitability is not a sustainable strategy. Price recovery can lead to products you are producing becoming uncompetitive or your customers seeking for substitutes thereby opening the door for new competition. Monopolies tend to thrive on price recovery in many instances because they know there are barriers to entry in their industry. When competition comes for such organisations it normally hits them hard to the extent that they may not recover in the long run. There are too many examples of such cases in Zimbabwe. Most of the companies relying on price recovery for profits have enriched themselves at the expense of their customers.

A more suitable business model is the one where profitability is driven by productivity and employees must be rewarded accordingly in such cases. Therefore when adjusting salaries it is important to look at both profitability and productivity. A model matrix for determining increases based on this model is shown below.

Productivity & Profit Linked Salary Increases Matrix

Profit Growth	Percentage Salary/Wage Increase
30% and above	8	10	12	14	16	18
26% to 30%	6	8	10	12	14	16
21% to 25%	4	6	8	10	12	14
16% to 20%	2	4	6	8	10	12
11% to 15%	0	2	4	6	8	10
0.5% to 10%	0	0	2	4	6	8
Productivity  Growth	<10%	11% to 15%	16% to 20%	21% to 25%	26% to 30%	30% and above

The model above ensures that wage increases are commensurate with increases in productivity so that the competitiveness of the economy is further enhanced. Another positive factor in using the above model is that wage increases, which reflect productivity gains, will ensure that there is no undue pressure on prices and erosion of real incomes. Our situation is currently the opposite of what the above model is trying to achieve. Labour wants salary increases linked to the PDL without considering productivity. The good thing about this model is that if management measures productivity they can use this model as a benchmark for all salary increases.  The same model can be linked to sustainable incentive schemes.

Memory Nguwi is the Managing Consultant of Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting firm. Phone 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number 0772 356 361 or email: mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com

Implementing The Balanced Scorecard Performance Management System

Implementing the Balanced Scorecard Performance Management System

More and more organisations today are resorting to the balanced scorecard as a performance management system. This method of performance management allows performance to be measured across four different perspectives, where traditionally it was based on financial indicators alone. The four balanced scorecard perspectives are Financial, Customer, Internal business processes and Learning & growth.

The balanced scorecard approach allows a holistic view of how well the business is performing. Looking at the financial perspective alone has proven in many cases to be unsustainable. An organisation's financial statements can report good performance while the business is actually on the verge of collapse. The balanced scorecard moves away from this by considering three other perspectives when measuring the performance of the organisation.

The Financial perspective is one of the four perspectives but, other things need to be considered in order for shareholder value to be maximised. We need to consider adding value to what we are offering our customer in order for them to purchase our product or service.

For this to happen, we need to ensure that the internal business processes within the organisation are working well in order to deliver this value to the customer and thus meet our financial targets. The final perspective, learning and growth, looks at key people issues as this is the backbone of a company strategy.

There are a number of challenges in implementing the balanced scorecard. If the challenges are not properly addressed, they could result in frustration and difficulty when using the system. We have been liaising with some of the balanced scorecard clients in order to find out what problems they have been facing and we found the following:

Collecting objective measurement information places a huge administrative burden on the organisation. While most organisations want to implement the balanced scorecard, they do not want to commit resources to collecting the information required for the scorecards to function effectively.

A lot of information resides in systems within the organisation but many organisations find it a challenge to objectively collect this information for performance purposes. Most organisations indicated that they do not have the capacity internally to measure their targets as goals are cascaded down to lower levels. Despite this difficulty, it was a general consensus that the results aspect of the system is excellent. This is because it allows people to become more focused as the system is results based thereby limiting subjectivity in performance assessments.

In our experience, many organisations opt to have intensive balanced scorecard training only for senior management within the organisations. After this the concept and goals are cascaded to the rest of the organisation during the building of scorecards without the rest of the organisation having received the same training.

All organisations that have avoided intensive training for the entire organisation, for whatever reasons, have experienced problems in implementing the balanced scorecard.

From our experience there is no short cut to effective implementation. All employees need to be trained to the same standard for the system to produce the desired results. Where shortcuts have been taken we have discovered that lower level employees are confused and do not see the link between their goals and the higher level goals.

We recommend that when an organisation embarks on the balanced scorecard system of performance management, adequate resources must be availed for the system to be implemented properly. This will allow for standardised training to be offered to all employees.

There is no better time to implement the balanced scorecard system than now considering the stability in the economy. Targets set under the scorecard system can be tracked without changing the targets more often as was the case during hyperinflation. Another key success factor in implementing the balanced scorecard system is to restructure rewards to support the achievements of performance targets under the scorecard system. The final and key success factor is that both the Board members and senior executives must be fully committed to the system as a way of transforming the organisation. The balanced scorecard is not a substitute for poor leadership. Performance measurement must start with the Board and cascade to the rest of the organisation. The balanced scorecard can work effectively and deliver the desired changes and results if implemented based on business needs rather than just following trends.

Memory Nguwi is the Managing Consultant of Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting firm. Phone 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number 0772 356 361 or email: mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com