#4 How an online management course helped me improve my CV
Hello everyone,
Welcome to my website and my 4th blog post.
In today’s blog I will talk about how taking an online management course has helped me improve my CV writing skills.
In the last blog post, I mentioned how individuals need to acquire management and technical expertise for a better job prospect. For science students, technical skills can be acquired through master’s or PhD while management education can be acquired through online courses.
I am taking the Google Project Management Course in Coursera. It’s a 6-month course with 6 modules and I am shocked to see that even the introductory module gave me a lot of clarity on the management skills, the industry prefers to see, in a job application. This has changed the way I write my CV and it is a positive improvement.
In the industry, majority of the jobs are project management jobs. Infact, Project Management jobs are estimated to increase by 33% or nearly 22 million new jobs by 2027.
China and India will represent more than 75 percent of the total project management-oriented employment.
This made me realize that hiring managers might want to see Project Management Qualities in entry level job applicants so that the new employees can be considered as a long-term investment.
So, I modified my CV to focus more on my project management, communication, and organisational skills.
A Project Manager has 5 main responsibilities:
1) Planning and Organization –Identify what the project wants to achieve.
2) Project Planning – Defining the objective, the key results, and the scope of the project.
3) Manage Tasks – Delegate tasks to team members; Communicate milestones to higher authority / stakeholder; Help with administrative formalities.
4) Budgeting Control and Time Bound Work – Work with administration and team to priorities the direction of project and the budget. Conduct regular meetings to keep track of progress.
5) Communication – Communicate the achievement of the project, the positives, the area of improvement, and whether the results satisfy the expected outcome / key deliverables.
To learn more about the job of a Project Manager - Read the article “How project managers impact organizations”
After reading this, I realized I had done much such management work during my PhD. I identified 2 tasks and wrote the details from a project manager's perspective.
The 2 tasks are:
1. Performing a ***** experiment at my PhD research Institute in collaboration with ***** facility. (not mentioning details for intellectual property rights)
2. Organising a career development workshop in collaboration with a government college. Securing a corporate grant to fund the workshop.
1. What I wrote in my CV earlier: “Organised and managed the work schedule at ***** to perform a *****, during PhD research”
What I write in my CV now: “Developed a ***** at *****. Delivered the chemicals at the expected time, helped the technicians manage administrative formalities, conducted regular meetings to analyze progress, and oversaw the quality control analyses. It was the first successful ***** experiment at *****.”
2. What I wrote in my CV earlier: “Secured corporate grant through my LinkedIn network to organize a career development workshop.”
What I write in my CV now: “Organised a career development workshop in collaboration with a government institution. Developed the proposal with event schedule and marketing strategy, invited speakers, developed feedback form with event success metrics, and estimated maximum budget. The proposal secured corporate funding from Cactus Communications.”
I also took other relevant courses through LinkedIn and Coursera to represent my global interest:
1. Google Project Management Course (Coursera) - Ongoing
2. Strategic Partnership (Project Management Institute Course) - LinkedIn
3. An Introduction to Consumer Neuroscience and Neuromarketing (Copenhagen Business School Course) - Coursera
4. Creating Positive Conversations with Challenging Customers (LinkedIn)
5. Developing Your Emotional Intelligence (LinkedIn)
I added some volunteering work with key results to show my work efficiency:
What I wrote in my CV earlier: “Marketing and analytics personnel at an EdTech initiative PhD Career Stories, an entrepreneurial venture by Tina Persson (Global ICF Career Coach).”
What I write in my CV now: “Marketing personnel at an EdTech initiative PhD Career Stories. I helped curate the content using viewer interaction analyses. This increased the LinkedIn page engagements by 2.35-fold, Twitter by 2.65-fold, and Facebook by 1.65-fold.”
You might ask: Does this change in writing style guarantee a job?
Answer: No. But the CV will represent my management qualities in me much better. This can generate more curiosity in the HR manager or hiring manager to learn more about me. Thus, it will increase the chances of being called for an interview.
Your CV has one job: To get you an interview. That’s why representation matters.
I do not know whether I have cracked my CV writing skill. But I am making progress.
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See you soon… 🤟
