Unlock the Power of Digital Signature Legitimacy in the European Union

How to eSign a document: digital signature legitimacy for Email Cover Letter in European Union

you all right it seems we are live and all good to go thank you very much to Lanka and Veronica who are helping me from Budapest and this is an Bennet from my own home in a secluded corner of the house hoping that the kids will not interrupt anything but please forgive me if they do I guess many of you are in similar situations during the lockdown which is hopefully coming to an end very soon so I can leave video just to say hi that to greet you live from from Belgium and I can see that you're already typing in while you're dialing in from or where you connected Croatia Sweden Brussels Stockholm Germany really from all over Europe perhaps even the world let's do our usual contest who's dialing in from the most farthest away from Brussels Estonia is runner up probably Barcelona anyone from other continents let's see nobody here yet but that's great in any case well thank you very much for joining - today's Bernard which is going to cover something different than last time we are looking at CDs and cover letters Oh Armenia okay probably you are the furthest away for for now so with that I will turn off my camera in a second just wanted to make sure that you are all connected everything works as it should and technology is on our side today as usual type your questions into the chat box and we'll send you the recording will send you the presentation afterwards but I try to make this an interactive session where you can ask as many questions as you like and I'll do my best to answer it whenever I cannot answer something we'll follow up with a written note that will circulate and send it to all the participants so with that I'll turn up my camera so you can focus your full attention to the presentation on simply writing and cover letters so let's get into this and as I said before this is slightly different from our usual episode focused webinars we are not talking anymore about episode processes or a very specific career selection methods we are looking at CV writing and cover letters obviously we talked about this in a European or EU context but this might go even beyond that so you don't necessarily need to apply for an EU job in order to benefit from the ideas I'll be sharing with you and this is applicable mostly for any job that you are seeking mostly in the European market and I say that because American cover letters America and CDs or resumes as it's usually called is slightly different so not everything may be completely applicable to the US or perhaps Asia or other parts of the world so with that this might be just a limitation the geographic limitation of everything I'll be sharing with you and first and foremost really it's applicable to the EU job market meaning the European institutions and the organisations around it so let's get into it and start with not necessarily with my background which you might know but start with the idea of what is your ultimate goal well I know this is not a very flattering picture but I like to use it in some of my career focused presentations is that you might be like that shampoo or cosmetic product on the Shelf being slightly similar and in in the early stages of your career very similar to many other candidates and you'd like to stand out you'd like to be the one that is picked by the employer and make sure that there is a good fit between what you want in career terms and what the employer is looking for but there's a very fierce competition it is a very difficult conundrum to convince to the employer to invite you to an interview to get through the door and be picked so your goal is really to stand out in a way that is unique in a way that you are the one that the employer will pick at least for an interview where you have far more chances of succeeding standing out it doesn't necessarily mean that you are so special in an objective sense that nobody else is like you standing out means you are so relevant to the job that they are trying to fill so it's really the relevance which makes you stand out and not necessarily some crazy characteristic that you have because you happen to speak five foreign languages plus plus plus some archaic ancient languages and you're fluent in Latin this is not necessarily a characteristic which would make you stand out yes would make you stand out in a party or in a social gathering but not necessarily help you land a job so it's the relevance that matters first and foremost so let's look at the ultimate objective well that is to convince the employer with your CV and with your motivation letter to invite you to the interview that is your number one goal and again the caveat that we're talking about career management we're talking about application to a job that was advertised whether at a new agency and they are using CV and cover letter based selection or it might be a job in an NGO or a consultancy or a company for that matter we are not talking very specifically about episode when it comes to EPS or opium personal selection office and all the tests and competitions that they administer in that process the CV has very minor relevance a CV is not really important you need to fill in an application form you need to put in information about your background your studies and your overall qualifications and your overall suitability to apply for those competitions but actually the CV and cover letter become important only after you are on the reserve list only once you are recruitable only when a european commission directorate-general or a unit or head of unit is sea to fill a vacancy and they pick your CV or pick your cover letter so there it's a it's a very different process and and all of this becomes relevant only in the very end so we're really focusing on the part where you need to convince an employer with your CV and motivation letter and get to the next stage which is an interview and I'm not covering interview in today's web it but interviews obviously are vital in persuading the future employer that you are a good fit so we are we are looking at the ways the best possible ways the best practice is you can do this so the number one question is what is your unique selling proposition to establish the relevance that I talked about earlier so how can you make yourself as suitable as applicable to a given job as possible and there are a couple of things that you would most likely possess there's some things that you would most likely have to convince that future employer the first one is probably your knowledge of the European Union so this is not necessarily something that many other candidates have or not to the extent that you have so if you've studied this at a university course or you did done a specialty or you've done a couple of extra of courses all of this can be a good selling point of how deep you know the EU or perhaps you have some publications or a thesis on that another one would be your international Network so perhaps you are very well-connected because of your traineeship or internship or any other job and that network has a huge value because if it's a consultancy or an NGO that needs to run a multi-national project these can come in very handy that you already have that sort of network perhaps another selling proposition is you understand policy and politics this is not obvious not a lot of people do follow politics is such degree that they understand the dynamics between the different actors the different players international relations so that understanding a really important point especially when you want to deal with European affairs and EU policies another one certainly is languages relevant languages so the question is which languages do speak well English perhaps French would be really really important in the EU job brigade interesting lead but Flemish not necessarily that's mostly for the Belgian local job market but not in you affairs and even in EU Affairs most often it's English is sufficient so that is usually a basic criterion and then having another one or two languages can be a big asset and one of those languages could be a main European language make a Spanish Italian perhaps even polish and it could be maybe a minor language if the organization you're applying to is doing business in Central and Eastern Europe perhaps speaking Russian or speaking Czech or speaking Slavic languages or Hungarian for that matter might be a plus so languages become really important in the context of the countries where the organization does business in and then subject matter expertise certainly you want to highlight that you deal with energy efficiency or you deal with development policy or competition law and you want to highlight that to a great extent and not just focus on that that this is what you know but you are aware of a lot of developments and the deep expertise in a given area and then brand so if you have already job experience and you'll work for say Facebook is that a good brand or is that a controversial band brand these days so some brands which may look amazing today may have a different perception a couple years down the line especially in political terms so in the EU institutions Facebook because of the privacy issues and data retention policy and news and all these issues has become a controversial brand but let's say you might be working for a wind energy organization that is probably perceived as a very positive brand so these things play a role in the perception of your own application so if you have that sort of breath it could be a volunteering organization we passed some time as a summer intern and that helps your application so all of this plays play a role in how your application is being perceived and whether you make it to the next stage think about this carefully think about this deeply of how you can present these elements in your cover letter and your CV really focusing or trying to structure it in a way that persuades the future employer or the HR officer who is doing the first round of selection so let's look at just one slide and you have much more details on this in other presentations I've given them and I don't want to spend any particular time on this except for this one minute recap of the kind of jobs that are out there in the EU political policy context so one big group is diplomatic jobs where the permanent representations of the EU 27 member states are all employing staff mostly civil servants who are sent from their home countries but occasionally others as well and these are great job dealing with European affairs representations or missions of non-eu countries are also in Brussels and they employ quite a handful of people and then second in the national flag spurts who are civil servants from your so to say home Cree and sell mostly to European Commission to work there and as the name suggests be seconded sent there for a year or two or longer another big group is political kind of jobs being the assistant of were of the European Parliament each member has two three sometimes four advisers assistants Sultan's working them and they since there are currently 705 m EPS I'm do the maths that's around two thousand people being employed as assistants each European Parliament political group has a certain number of staff advisers and another staff working with them on various policy fields that's another interesting group and then advocacy organizations whether from Greenpeace or transparency international or any other that have a strong political policy agenda to push they are also very interesting employers and then in this little recap the third big group obviously is the private sector that can include think tanks so research organizations like the Centre for European political studies and others consultancies there are lots of them in Brussels and trade associations to find most if not all of these you can really make use of the transparency register so the joint transparency register of the European institutions is a great directory repository if you may of these organizations so if you're looking for keywords or kind of organizations you can always look them up and perhaps you'll come across a few that you have never heard of but they are interesting as a potential employer for you so with that lets actually transit to the core of today's a presentation today is a presentation which is the first part cover letters so cover that the writing here is my disclaimer I love cover letter writing I really like series as well but cover letter writing is really an art so I was very happy that Lanka who helped me design this beautiful presentation put this slide in here because it's really an artful way of presenting a message artful way of presenting a narrative that will convince an employer to give consideration to your application but before I go into it let me quickly look at a few questions and I see quite a few are coming in so let me randomly pick a few how important is to upload our CV in our app so account well well absolutely to do that to upload your CV you upload your CV but they're not really gonna deal with it in any particular way so this is not going to make or break your application as long as you you do the formal act of uploading the CV where it where it does become important is really at the application phase in the very end once you are on the reserve list so they are not really going to look at it one slight exception to this rule is the the sort of specialist competitions which use a so called Talent screener but it's not exactly a CV a talent screener is a different form that you need to fill in when you are applying for specialist competitions we have lots of materials on the U training that you on talent screener articles tips and tricks and even webinars of how to make the most of it but that's a bit different all right how important are official certificates in languages honestly I don't think they are very important unless there's a formal criterion that you need to prove that use you have a dello qualification for Spanish or I think it was called Dolph correct me if I'm wrong for French or Oxford certificate or whichever for English unless they formally require you to show that I don't think this is important anymore these days you you need to indicate the level at which you speak a language but anyways you need to prove it they will have an interview in that language with you they will ask you written say articles you've written in that in that language so all of that is you need to prove with anyways so those formal qualifications are not really important another question before I move on when we see in a job application form and EU institution the sexual motivation letter do they want us to write why we want to apply for this job or why they should choose us or or both is there a difference with the term cover letter that's that's a very interesting question when in the absolute system they ask you to write some motivation your imagination to apply for an EU job well that part that written part is actually not that important in the overall selection process so I don't want to discourage you from giving it you attention you should but it's not going to make or break your application having said that when you write in the episode process the motivation to to be any official first you don't know which job you're going to lend so you cannot really write I want to be a trade policy officer because you don't know if you're going to end up being a trade policy officer so you need to write about your overall interest and motivation to work for the EU number two this is somewhat of a cover letter but it's it's more about your own commitment to the idea of the European Union why you see yourself being an EU civil servant working for a public organisation and perhaps number three is what is your contribution what can you bring to the institutions to the to the to the building of the European idea that perhaps other candidates may not have so that is more of the knowledge you have and the personal commitment to it as well so it has a lot to do with with a cover letter but it's a little bro because it's not so specific for one institution or one particular job I know there are quite a few other questions I'll try to come back to those but as I said if I don't have time we'll follow up with a written memo and I see there are one or two questions about the caste system so the contract agent selection system I'll try to come back to those let's look at cover letters what are some best practices and questions if you asked me to tell you one single piece of advice when it comes to cover letters this is the advice always think of what is in it for the employer what is the employers true interest perhaps benefit that they get from hiring you and I've seen a lot of bad examples over the many years I've spent in Brussels sometimes when I was the recruiter and I was the one reading those cover letters and CVS sometimes when others would send it to me for my review and very often candidates do this a mistake where they do not think with the employers head there are too much broadcasting what they know how good they are without actually thinking why it benefits the employer and I'll give you a couple of other ideas and examples that we look at in the next couple of minutes so one thing you could say is well why should they hire you many candidates would say well I'm great at I'm great at researching EU funds for underdeveloped southern European regions okay but why should they hire you what is the benefit that they will get you you can do this work for them and this will benefit them in the following way like I do this and this can help your organization's be better funded through European research grants so you not only say the benefit you bring but it also how it specifically benefits the employer you're trying to land a job at another idea is well what do you know about the employers organization do your homework it takes really 10 minutes to Google around check their annual report a couple of press releases look at their organization chart look at the you do a Google search in news with the name of the organization and you see what was being said about them so you do your due diligence your research and you can put certain bits and pieces into your cover letter it shows that you care it shows that you really look that there activities and you are just simply interested in them to the extent that you've done your homework so this is such a low hanging fruit such an easy thing to do and many applicants do not do it here's another idea and I'm not saying and you must do it in every case you could do it if you think it's appropriate what would you do in the organization on the first day or the first week or the first month so you can say if you were to hire me here is what I could do or would do to help your organization advance its goals if it's an NGO if it's an in-house lobbyist if it's a consultancy you can come up with ideas you know it doesn't mean that you are putting it in writing and you're fully committed and they will tell you once they've hired you well you wrote it in your letter now get to work this shows that you thought deeply about the kind of activities the organization does and you are proactively demonstrating to them what contribution you could make so here's another idea you might want to do a video introduction and again I'm not saying that you should and some organizations are rather conservative and they may not like the idea of you with a video but perhaps if it's a communication Jobs perhaps it's a more creative or outward-facing job perhaps a quick video introduction that you can so easily upload to YouTube or any other platform can work magic and you put it to limited views or private or whatever it's called you don't want circulated to others you send it only to them but this can work nicely online portfolio he have you do have publications have you published in academic journals or just wrote a series of blogs perhaps you have your own blog or website and not necessarily your Facebook page but something more professional perhaps your LinkedIn page where you publish certain articles that can be helpful resource for them to trust you to Ray their confidence in your abilities and that you are the person you claim to be in the job application so all of this these are ideas again these are not necessarily things to do it's not a checklist but think about it when you apply this it can make your cover letter and your application stand out all right a couple of random examples which I've collected over years this was sent actually to me when I was hiring a manager a couple months or a couple years ago and I had a little question here that candidates had to fill in and I asked this question do you have a thorough knowledge of institution's procedures and the person says yeah the european union has got many institutions and just simply one word yeah it's a little odd it's a little strange in an application like that I don't think it projects the right message that I want especially if I want this person to correspond with senior officials or politicians I'm not sure that they would be under or they would understand the right status I don't want to jump to conclusions too early but it's not a good signal another thing it's show me that you care about the organization my organisation in this case I was the employer then I said well what is your main motivation and the person said I'll give you through reasons I think that I can benefit from the experience of the director I feel myself suitable to work in small team and I still have a lot to learn very happy that's great the person shows commitment to learning and motivation but it's too many sentences starting with I and why it's good for me as a candidate but not necessarily me as the future employer another thing which I think works really really powerfully and very well in cover letters of CV writing is anticipate objections you might want to brainstorm by yourself or with friends or colleagues who have ten minutes to spare and say why would they reject my application so this is a good method for defense lawyers or so what how are they gonna push back against the arguments I'm going to make first one could be they might say well if you're not based in Brussels Luxembourg Madrid wherever the job is can you relocate and this is the question they might implicitly ask themselves and if you're lucky they will explicitly ask you but if they don't well that is a problem because they might they might say well there is an issue here I just want to make sure that the sound is working fine I want to have a quick confirmation because I have a with microphone somewhere thank you thank you for letting me know so I'll just go on question here can you relocate is making sure that you upfront right in your cover letter that even though I live in Vilnius I am willing to relocate to Madrid where the job is you upfront address this question number two will you need a work permit if you're not an EU citizen or you're applying in a non-eu country for a job related to your fares well you might need a work permit and you want to anticipate that and that the future employer know that this is an issue or you can actually take care of it by yourself another one might be an issue for some of you if you have a PhD let's say or you just have multiple degrees and you're applying for a job which doesn't require such level of education the employer might implicitly ask well aren't you overqualified and this is not a third question they would ask in writing perhaps in an interview but not in writing but it will cross their mind if they see your CV and they are wondering about it so you might anticipate that and you can write up from that it might seem from my profile that I'm overqualified and yet my motivation my interest in the topic or my current situation I am very interested in the job despite this fact so you're not downplaying it you are not hiding but you upfront address it because you know that they will wonder about this so this is a pretty good technique to dispel any out and you're not hoping that oh maybe they think I'm overqualified I try to get away with that or I tried not to put some qualification I have just to downplay it no you could try the technique or the the tactic of truly addressing it upfront so let me take another few seconds or moments to to to address these some of the questions you put here is one so from your explanation it seems that the cover letter and the motivational letter are the same am I wrong in fact well they are when it comes to any job application this really goes by both names motivational letter or cover letter so they are pretty much the same at least in my interpretation you might have instances where somebody writes a very very brief cover letter pretty much an email in which you send two attachments one of them being your CV and the other one is a more formal motivation letter so in that sense the cover letter would really be just saying dear so-and-so I'm applying for the job so-and-so and please find attached my motivation letter in my CV so in that sense then that email would be the cover letter the way I define it if I think it makes sense to have your true innovation letter as part of as an email so the email itself in which you send your CV is your motivation letter or cover letter and you don't separate these two and then there is the other scenario where in the absol application system they would have as one of the questions on your motivation to work for the European institutions and there you write some words of motivation why you want to do that but then again that's a slightly different scenario but I'm happy you asked because it doesn't make sense I've seen some applicants who who really wrote a nicely laid out PDF with called motivation letter and then they put a lot of thought and a lot of words in bit laying out their motivation and the truly the cover letter was too the very brief email maybe one or two questions what should be the maximum length of the letter two pages well rather one page and if it's an email ideally five six paragraphs and not more and each paragraph should not be too wordy either so it shouldn't be too long it shouldn't be over-explaining and the layout is a very very important part and we'll talk about that in a second but you could use bullet points you could use numbers you could use a bit of bolding you can use a kind of a couple of visual cues it's it doesn't have to be long or perhaps it shouldn't be long if it is it won't get read anyways most employers or even HR officers would first scan it and if it's interesting to them then they will go deeper and even for Seavey's and we'll get to the Seavey's in a moment even those should not be longer than two pages no matter how many achievements you have then you try to pick and choose the most important ones alright let's go on to the next part and look at a cover letter example and this is from an application I blanked out many personally identifiable information from this candidate it was a couple years back so it's not even relevant in that sense for that person anymore but it's a good example I find a good example as a bad example because when you start reading it you see dear so-and-so representative the word representative is already a little odd to my taste I'm writing doing press my sincere interest in the position of so-and-so through my experience at Banco de espana gained excellent understanding of EU regulation and so on so confident that my energy passion exceptional analytical problem-solving and language skills would enable me to add the immediate value huh this is not the best start for my taste so this is rather self-serving even though it seems that the person is offering their ad teas and their skills on a silver plate it doesn't connect their skills and their knowledge to my needs this is exactly what I talked about earlier when the candidate does not consider the needs of the employer where this could be framed that I didn't create actually so this is a good example of this but I'm I'm telling you right now when the person says I'm confident that my energy passion exceptional analytical etc can help starting the sentence like this it's not necessarily that bad but not finishing it is what's bad so they could have said with my energy passion and analytical and language skills I can contribute to your goals in the following way or I understand maybe start a sentence I understand that your organization's goal is to secure more funding for your research project for self-driving cars to which I can contribute through my exceptional analytical problem-solving and language skills so you see that I immediately connected the very specific need of the organization which you can find out thanks to the internet very easily to the stuff that you can bring but simply saying that listen I'm amazing hire me it's just not going to do the trick so very similarly if I just look at the the middle part before pursuing my MBA part it's just very hard to read it's too long so if just from a formatting perspective it's too wordy and no one's really gonna read it to such degree if I just pick one part in it let me try to get a pointer there we go hopefully you see my pointer so it says last summer I developed a business model for big data as part of cloud services at Cisco okay this is great but again saying the big data model I developed for this particular company can help your organization in the following way so the whole idea of making a claim without connecting it to the the organization's very unique goals is not helpful and so many candidates do this mistake really please do not you have now the privilege the benefits the the eye-opening message that this is not the way to go just make sure that you check your cover letter check your motivation letter and you you fix it from this perspective here's another one very similar and again I'm convinced that my experience knowledge and skills can be beneficial to the European Commission this is a job application to the Commission so again this is too vague it doesn't say which knowledge which experience you could say my eight years of experience in data privacy issues my knowledge of gdpr and my analytical and event planning skills would be beneficial to the Commission that is one a positive side here the bullet points it really makes a big difference so it's much easier much easier to scan the cover letter and see those key points and then in terms of some word certified civil servant at the bottom if you look at about them certified civil servant it's a bit of it's a strange expression to me what do you mean certified civil servant if I'm a European Commission official it might be entirely obvious what a certified civil servant is in Spain or Portugal or or Estonia but not necessarily from the organization's perspective the organisation I'm working at right now as an employer so this is a bit of what is the word the curse of knowledge that is the term I was looking for the curse of knowledge meaning we think that the other knows what we know and the other may live in a completely different world the abbreviations are using the the ideas you're using might be very very different and they may not be obvious to them so try to think of what they know and which terms they are familiar with let's look at series let's translate a little bit to series and see you and again for the Americans among you or those who prefer the American term resumes what are the basics and what's the core idea that you need to convey first and foremost make it relevant to the employer it's okay to change the order of certain items it's okay to highlight some elements in your CV and downplay a few others if it tells a more relevant and more connected message to that particular employer so if you did a summer internship at a bookstore it may be completely irrelevant for some employer where is he applying for a job at the European Library Association well that becomes more important so you can make it employer relevant based on what kind of job they are seeking to fill updated as easy and simple and obvious as it sounds I've seen a lot of CVS that were sent out a person started job hunting and two months later they kept sending the same CV which ended two months earlier and I was wondering what they have been doing since so this is really core or such a basic thing to do make it consistent with your LinkedIn so there's no discrepancy especially if you put the LinkedIn link into the CV that make sure that the two are telling the same message the file size again such an easy mistake that many candidates do they turn their word into a PDF and the PDF is like five megabytes and somebody is downloading it or a bad internet connection on their phone it's just it's just it's just not professional there are services we can shrink the file size make it more easy to read on mobile devices and other platforms make sure that it's battable convert the word to PDF never sent the word because the formatting is gonna fall apart again such a basic thing to do and something we talked about earlier maximum two pages and definitely not more I've seen in some research posts and those who have academic publications that their CV is five six eight pages long that's really a no-go if you have a publication and there's an important part of your application link it provide some online resource where all of it is listed or you can say 58 publications in various academic journals and then you put the link I know that there is a question here for about the europass cv and that's something we'll come back to because that is definitely longer than two pages and I can already tell you my answer Europe s CV only use that if they explicitly ask you to use it so if the employer says sending your CV do not use to Europe s format it's such a on the user-friendly format that I highly discourage you from using it if they specifically ask that it has to be your pass format of course you're gonna use it it's gonna be more than two pages and you make the most of it all right small formatting I like this formatting you might have a different preference or some employers may not like it but it's very visual to demonstrate this person's various language and professional skills on a scale of five with the dots I don't think it's overkill you can find different ways of presenting it but it's really helpful from an employer perspective if I say well the person has to have strong presentation negotiation skills and I see four out of five at the South evaluation that's pretty good so you can think about similar ways of presenting information and because for instance when I see that someone's English skills is c1 or their French is b2 I honestly have absolutely no idea what level that is and I probably don't want to look up footnote or some explanation that b1 corresponds to the person being able to maintain a conversation in a social setting that's really not helpful so make it much easier to understand from early on with very clear language or symbols another bad example but it comes to the formatting all caps it's a soup of of technical terms and skills that the person listed it's just too many and very very hard to read so the visual and the content presentation here is really bad and then the CV ideally should tell the story there should be some narrative or as the French would say a Phil who's where a thread a red thread that goes through the CV and says ok this person seems to be very analytical and dealing with various policy areas or this person is really keen on education but for instance in this one it was a little confusing that there's European studies there's language there is an F business communication and then there's some exchange program it doesn't really tell that sort of a story it's hard to put some narrative on this one and then the question of photo we collected a couple of random examples of what not to do well first and foremost in some countries it's even illegal to put a photo so make sure that you're aware of the local regulations if it happens to be as far as I know in the UK it's highly discouraged if perhaps even outright illegal these days to put a photo for equal opportunities and non-discrimination issues in Brussels job market in in EU Affairs I often see photos I often see that so it's not outright banned again depends on your personal tastes so if you feel comfortable in outputting a photo do not use these styles the one that you have on here make sure it's a professional photo perhaps even there's something to it with it with a nice background but it's definitely fashionable background and not a partying or an excursion unless you want to tell the story with your photo so if you're applying to work for an organization that deals with with wind energy and then you have a photo on top of a wind turbine well perhaps that's a good message well don't climb up on a wind turbine that's dangerous but you get the idea where the photo might be closely linked to the very kind of organization you're applying to that might work fine otherwise just use a professional looking photo if you decide to use a photo at all and here's our friend or foe the europass cv so here as many of you would be aware it's difficult to make a nice europass cv given its constraints and the kind of formatting it required one idea there I would suggest you limit the number of bullet points do not put there five six eight bullet points with very long sentences if you can perhaps put just one line sentences shrink it into a telegram style message where you just put the key words and the key information so it's really easy to scan and look through it three perhaps four bullet points maximum you might use a few bold elements that's okay but do not overkill it do not try to put anything and everything in to the CV and then the job titles that you held that's a question whether you want to use the job title that you officially were given or perhaps something that that helps the future employer understand the job you did it might be the second one it might work better so you don't necessarily see manager or let's say a policy analyst okay you were a policy analyst but the future employer has no idea what a policy analyst actually did in that particular organization so you might say renewable energy policy analyst with a staff of three or as part of the director-general's immediate team something that gives an indication of the level of responsibility you held the number of projects you've worked on and the impact that you made it might be in the title it might be in the bullets where you want to highlight with concrete specific numbers the budget you handled the impact you may the outcome that came from your project that you managed to secure five million euros for a research project in Bulgaria so you want to be very specific that gives the employer a very clear indication of the level at which you worked the impact you made and the responsibilities that you helped and there are a couple of questions so I'll pause here for a moment so you can or actually let me just look at the CV and then I'll pause after after this one so in this CV one thing that immediately stands out this person started with the education and that that's not something I would recommend if I see somebody starting with education and only then work experience I immediately think this person is still studying or just very very recently graduated and they barely have any work experience so because of that reason I I suggest you start with the work experience and then they put the education afterwards and and then be careful with certain business terms so something if I look at your product line manager might be entirely clear in a business setting but it might be a little confusing in the in public administration for a public official or HR officer says okay product line manager what exactly does that mean in this particular setting so make sure that the curse of knowledge this beautiful term I mentioned earlier is not at play what else in terms of traineeship should you and should you include traineeship or not in your experience or perhaps the education I think if it's a relevant traineeship yes by all means and it is a work experience I don't think it's truly an education part even if it's part a formal part or formula requirement of your education I still would put that to the work experience part as long as it is relevant and even if it's unpaid that really doesn't matter from the CV perspective all right let me pause for a second and handle a couple of questions before we look at the ten questions you always wanted to ask about CDs but never dare to we are super-sensational we are turning into a tabloid but hopefully that will be ten questions you have not yet asked and if you did I'll just quickly scan over those so let's look at the many questions you've put in the past ten or so minutes should we include a professional summary on our CDs you could I'm not saying you should but you could and even if you do make sure it's really short and it actually says something I've seen a lot of short summaries that typically would go under profile or profile summary or my my profiles something like this and you would have a two or three line summary of who you are what you do but it's very tempting to put there a lot of blood and a lot of meaningless jargon I'm a hard-working motivated multilingual international minded EU focused professional with a strong motivation to work in a multinational setting what did I just say a big nothing this is really a lot of cliches that really are not helpful for an employer to read so there you could say I'm a person with an international relations background with ten years of experience in 12 countries in Africa and Europe dealing with development aid having handled 500 million budget projects with a team of 14 I'm motivated to put this experience to use at European institutions that sort of profile is much more helpful because it has figures and numbers and and and something more concrete that helps me as a potential employer understand that this person is a serious player all right should I put my signature on the cover letter I don't think it's that important if it's if it's a separate PDF I guess yes it makes it a little more formal and that you you you guarantee or you vouch for its truthiness truthiness is that even a word you vote for it's it's it's its validity but it's not such a an important requirement if you write an email and the cover letter is in in an email that is not necessary to write a formal signature all right well Vasco says truthfulness yes thank you very much that is indeed a word okay what else papa I don't know about others but everyone with the institution's told me to always use europass even if it was not specifically mentioned in the vacancy I honestly don't know probably I would ask around a couple of friends and folks who work for institutions perhaps those of you who are actually working for the institution's right now put in the chat box please what do you think is it really do you expect or have you heard your colleagues expect that or that is that is not so necessary because unless it's really part of the formal process where they ask you to upload into a central database or a system or the contract agent selection tool the caste system then it's probably needed that it's an europe SCV because they want to come they're apples to apples they want to make sure that these are standardized formats but when it's a specific job and you need to send in I don't think it's a formal requirement and here I see that here's one comment from there and that human trainee so the parliment trainees were explicitly asked to submit to Europe a CV you see that's clear enough because you were specifically as but when it's just a simple application than rather or not there's just so much more freedom flexibility to format CVS differently by the way the tool conv canva.com actually the tool in which this very presentation was made has very good CV templates so I encourage you to look at it if you'd like to find a nice format perhaps one thing one word of caution about series do not overkill the formatting don't try to be super creative fancy too many colors and symbols and stuff like that generally speaking most EU related or EU Affairs jobs are somewhat conservative when it comes to candidate selection and CV formatting so rather be a bit more toned down than extremely creative you're not applying for a PR job in New York but this is something which is mostly about policy and politics perhaps even communication but rather be a bit more conservative in that sense all right I know there are many other questions we'll try to come back to some of those but I'd like to cover these 10 questions we have up here in a nutshell so first one should I mention personal information such as age nationality in my CV age probably no unless it has some relevance to a profile you're seeking because they want 15 years of experience you want to make sure that you highlight that aspect nationality well you could it's okay as long as it again it has no real bearing on the on the job permit or relocation issues or others and it's usually an indication of the country you know best to use this term so perhaps it's an addition that you are familiar with a certain country or region so that's a plus given your origin or your background or perhaps your language knowledge so it can actually help your application further but other truly personal information you don't need to at that point unless it has a strong relevance to the job itself number two well should we use a European format CV I think we discussed it at length so I'll just quickly skip it and motivation letters are they always mandatory usually they are not mandatory usually an employer would not require you to send one but I highly encourage you to do so once you have your CV don't just write a quick email dear employer here is my CV please take a look I'm happy to be available for an interview yeah probably in a more sophisticated style but this is the idea so it's not mandatory but highly I highly encourage you to do it because you can really highlight say just three key points from your profile in that email to grab the attention of the HR officer the assistant the secretary the CEO whoever might be looking at those emails say okay is it worth for me to look at that candidate deeper so I very much say so do write a cover letter or motivation letter what can I do to boost my CV for an EU career well you can listen to our webinar series obviously but you can do some ear elated job or program you can volunteer you can try an online course you can volunteer in the related field or in NGO you can do a lot of things to establish more relevance if you are coming from a very different background number five on the CV is it better to list my skills or explain them briefly I think if you pick a limited number of skills whether it's project management whether it's organization event organization or public speaking whatever it may be I probably would just carefully strategically put or pick three or four and maybe just write one line about why or how you gain that skill and why that is helpful to the employer so not just put there a laundry list of skills and trying to impress the employers by listing 15 things that you are a yoga instructor and you are perfectly capable of managing 100-plus teams and then multitasking like nobody else so that doesn't help and it's not really credible number six how can I write an attractive CV a letter to be selected to cast competitions so it's probably one of the questions I've seen that come up in more nuance so we'll come back to it but in a nutshell all these principles apply so all these principles that I've listed apply from formatting from message from narrative from picking the right words and the right pieces of information to be selected and it's a database so having there some keywords so you are easily findable becomes really important and then any CV motivation letter tips for EU consultancy these agencies or interim error again this is a question we get often but it's essentially the ideas I listed it's it's really making sure that your profile is as relevant as possible to the position and you're not just spraying the employers with the same cover letter in the same city but you take a bit of time and try to establish more relevance for that particular job I'm gonna reserve list so this is for the episode context how do I get my CV in front of recruiters to get a job well the good news is we have a webinar exactly on that of how to get a job from the reserve list it's often called applications sent to head of units at different commissioned departments or it could be if there is a specific week you can see and then making sure that you do everything to establish your own credentials and send an application number nine in what language should my CV be written so it can be found by HR well if usually English but if there is a technological way or it's relatively easy for you to perhaps create a French version of it or another language because it's important for that particular job or profile you could try that so you could say here's an English version a French version and it just makes it easier to pending on the employer and it sends the message that you are bilingual or at least available in both languages and then number 10 can I send you my CV to get it checked this is a question we also get often and well unfortunately we have relatively limited bandwidth to really checks TVs in depth but we have Career Guidance service that's a paid service on the U training where we help you with this particular task of making better cover letters and there are CDs you can find it through the coaching menu and there we can assist you professionally and with dedicated attention for your CV and cover letter needs but having said that actually next week we are doing seek encounter clinics so we already have several dozens of CVS and cover letters or helpful to the broader community of what to do and what not to do so we'll be looking at it for one hour and I'll give you my opinion and hopefully that's a good learning experience that you can benefit from and I know that there are many other questions in my list maybe I'll just take one or two before we finish our webinar to respect everyone's time so here's one yeah the site somebody was asking about the site for CV formats it was canva how do we know which keywords to use well it depends on the profile you are applying for if you're an economist then you want to talk about macroeconomic analysis and econometrics or whatever your specialty is so make sure that those keywords are in the CV or in the absol system it's listed on the IT tool or the the place where you upload your information that you are easily findable so we'll come back to all the other questions that you put there I'm very grateful for that that you have such a interest in these topics as I said this is really my passion perhaps that came through in the webinar today and thanks very much for being such a great audience with these great questions and an input to be followed up next week with the live CV clinic and if other questions come to mind just send us an email as I said we don't have full bandwidth to really do it for free the CPA Review and the motivation letter feedback but this is something we do offer as a professional service and other than that wishing you lots of luck with your career whether it's in Brussels Luxembourg or elsewhere in Europe or beyond and take these these ideas to heart improve your CV improver cover letter and hopefully that will lend you your dream job so thanks very much for being here with us a little big thanks to lenka for helping me with the presentation and Veronica for all the technical help in one week on the 13th of May so good luck with your your habit and thanks for being here