The Definitive Guide to Affiliate Marketing

6 chapters

An introduction to the world of affiliate marketing: how does it work? Is it right for you? How do you choose the best platform and channel work with? How do you scale? This free ebook teaches beginner and intermediate marketers how to earn promoting digital products and online businesses.

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6 chapters

• 1. What is Affiliate Marketing?
  This chapter provides a step-by-step journey through the world of affiliate marketing. You’ll learn what it is, how it works, and most importantly, how you can make money doing it. And since good affiliate marketers can be hard for brands to find, you’ll learn everything you need to stand out from the crowd.
• 2. How to Make Money With Affiliate Marketing
  Dive deep into the mechanics of how to sell, track, and get paid for the work you’ll be doing. This will help you understand more about what you’re getting into, and provide some insight into how to make money with affiliate marketing.
• 3. What to do Before Becoming an Affiliate Marketer
  Take a look at a step-by-step method you can use to learn how to become an affiliate marketer. Whether you decide to go it alone, partner with others, or look for affiliate programs, taking these measures will give you a solid foundation as you start as an affiliate.
• 4. Proven Affiliate Marketing Methods
  Go through the specifics of how you can use a wide variety of methods to help you make money as an affiliate marketer. You’ll learn how to do affiliate marketing with a blog, paid ads, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
• 5. Choosing an Affiliate Marketing Program
  Learn everything you need to know about affiliate programs. You’ll see why they’re needed and learn more about some of the best programs available to you as a newcomer. But first, you need to know what they are and how they work.
• 6. Successful Affiliate Marketing Examples
  Inside are some successful affiliate marketing examples. We’ll go through a few different affiliate marketers, assess their online presence, and see what methods they’ve used to build success. And hopefully, like a good motivational speech, their success stories will fire you up to start your affiliate journey.

Author

Brad Smith

Brad Smith is the founder of Codeless, long-form content creators for SaaS companies. Their work has been featured The New York Times, Business Insider, TheNextWeb, Shopify, Moz, Unbounce, HubSpot, Search Engine Journal, and more.

Facebook Monetization: The What, Why, Where, and How

Source

Facebook is quite possibly the most enduring social media channel in existence. No other online media giant has caught so much flack for data collection.

As of early 2019, it boasts more than 2.7 billion active monthly users, with 500,000 new users added daily.

Although Facebook has recently become the target of an even more intense media campaign and a hotly debated topic surrounding privacy protections, with these figures, it remains safe to say Facebook will remain a major social media platform for the foreseeable future.

What is Facebook monetization?

As the name implies, Facebook monetization describes the act of making money by leveraging Facebook as a monetization platform.

But that doesn’t mean our definition goes out the window.

Remember?

You’re here to earn money from something of value you provide to your audience.

This will remain true wherever you are, because you’re building a brand that’s made to last.

Among all the social media channels, Facebook also remains arguably the most lucrative platform in 2018.

In fact, because Facebook’s audience is also maturing (with younger audiences not as eager to hop onboard), Facebook and its user base may also be switching over to a more business-oriented mindset and using the platform more and more as a marketing channel.

In this chapter, we’ll discuss how to create an income stream with Facebook. Specifically, I’ll go over a few key considerations on how to earn money from Facebook, including what to do and what not to do on the social platform. We’ll also cover the most important aspects of Facebook monetization, such as

• What you should know about Facebook’s new guidelines
• How to earn money from Facebook pages
• How to build your Facebook group
• How to make money with Facebook ads

Let’s get started.

3.1 How Facebook monetization works

Before we can dive straight into how to earn from Facebook, it’s critical that we go over a few important changes that have affected everyone on the platform, users and brands alike.

Facebook has recently come under intense scrutiny for its multiple privacy violations, all of which have made it the subject of much marketing debate.

So the question on everyone’s mind is, Is Facebook marketing a waste of time and money in 2018?

It’s an interesting question, but for the foreseeable future, it’s merely an alarmist perspective that detracts from actually making you money.

After all, while people are hesitating to invest in Facebook as a marketing channel, others are pushing ahead full force because they’ve got the results they want, and until the very last day of Facebook’s existence, they’ll be pressing on until they can no longer profit.

Why would you do otherwise?

Important GDPR and privacy policy updates

That said, we’ve got a lot to cover here, so let’s get the pesky rules out of the way first.

Complying with GDPR has become a central concern for businesses operating on Facebook. It is in fact the most recent major update to Facebook monetization requirements.

Here’s a quote from Facebook about how seriously you should take this issue:

Creators and publishers with multiple violations could lose access to all monetization features.

What is GDPR? It’s a set of policies that affects you primarily if you’re planning to target users residing in the European Union.

The specific Facebook features that are affected are Facebook Pixel and Custom Audiences.

What is Facebook Pixel?

Think of Facebook Pixel as a tracker.

The Pixel is a line of code you place on your website, so that Facebook can help you keep track of Facebook users coming to your site. This is an extremely powerful feature, which has been somewhat inconvenienced by the GDPR release.

Let’s look at how it’s been affected. 

(You can access Facebook Pixels and other business features through your Business Manager account). 

Facebook provides a few examples of what types of businesses might be affected by these changes:

• Retail websites gathering product information viewed by visitors for ad retargeting based on their site activity
• Blogs that use an analytics tool like Google Analytics to collect demographic data from its readers
• Media and news sites using third-party ad servers that collect data from visitors who have been exposed to their display ads
• Facebook advertisers who install Facebook pixel on their site to measure conversions and retarget visitors on Facebook

If this sounds like you, and you’re wondering whether the GDPR applies to your business idea, you can read the details here.

Having said that, getting GDPR consent from your visitors is a straightforward process:

Use a bar or popup to inform your visitors that you’re collecting data, and specify what type of data you’ll be collecting. Once you get them to agree to it, you’re all set.  

But if you want to upload the data you’ve collected back onto Facebook to create a custom audience, then in the near future, you’ll be forced to provide proof of consent to Facebook.

Facebook monetization standards

Facebook most likely has the most extensive monetization guidelines out of any platform operating online. Here’s a summary list of “rules” you can cross-reference when aiming to monetize:

• Share authentic content.
• Develop an established presence. (This means your account must be at least 90 days old).
• Comply with Facebook’s community standards.
• Comply with Facebook’s payment terms.
• Comply with Facebook’s page terms.
• Adhere to content guidelines (covered in the callout in the next section).

Make sure to dig deeper into each of these areas and familiarize yourself with Facebook’s monetization standards. Although most of these standards should be self-explanatory (as if you need to be told not to post violent content), reviewing them in detail will give you the boost in confidence you might need to invest your hard-earned money into Facebook advertising.

You can read the detailed list of monetization standards here.

Most people forget that Facebook isn’t just a social channel.

It’s a data collector. It aggregates and sells its users’ data, meaning it’s ideally designed as a marketing platform and channel.

This allows Facebook to provide the businesses that operate on its platform a number of extremely powerful tools at their disposal.

Now let’s go over the many ways you can earn from Facebook effectively. We’ll also cover examples where business owners have achieved success by applying the very strategies and principles we’re about to discuss.

3.2 Facebook monetization strategies

It can be easy to make money on Facebook.

In fact, many people only use Facebook to generate an income stream.

We’ve already discussed why this is such a risky idea, but it goes to show that Facebook still reigns supreme as a social media channel that also doubles as a data aggregator + marketing platform helping businesses connect with their target audience.

Since the focus of this book is on creating a brand that’s made to last, we’ll be going over the main features you can use to build your brand and a loyal fan base.

Ways to make money on Facebook

Of the multiple ways to make money on Facebook, we’ll be sticking to the few that help you generate an income stream while still building a solid brand.

Since Facebook is a social channel, we can’t just post things and forget about them.

Instead, we need to engage meaningfully and respond to comments, and like and share things we also find to be of value.

How to earn money from Facebook pages

The monetization of Facebook pages has always been the classic approach to establishing a business presence on the platform.

If you want to earn money from facebook pages (yes, you can have more than one), then ideally you’re going to have a little investment capital.

But if not, here’s a few popular ways you can monetize Facebook pages:

1. Drive traffic to your blog by posting helpful and relevant links from your site, where you have relevant offers in place, like your own courses or Google Adsense banners.
2. Sell your own products. (You can do this easily by setting up a Shopify store directly on your Facebook page).
3. Sell affiliate products.

How to grow your Facebook page

There is no quick and easy way to grow a Facebook page unless you’re ready to pull out your wallet. And unless you’re confident you can make that money back right away, it’s not worth investing in just yet. (Once you have a few sales under your belt, then you can crank up the results with paid advertising).

Growing a Facebook page takes hard work because you want your page to be viewed as a resource.

Here’s the catch:

Because Facebook users know that it’s primarily businesses that are operating Facebook pages out of self-interest, they’ll find it hard-pressed to view your page as a resource. Instead, if they follow your page, they’re more likely to be fans of your brand.

Here’s an example of an awesome Facebook page that successfully frames itself as a resource:

Source

Just look at their number of followers: 41,003.

If you go through their posts, you’ll notice pretty much every post getting over 100 likes, loves, and even shares.

This is what a highly engaged audience looks like.

Once you visit their blog, you’ll notice relevant banner ads, but none of them are so intrusive as to disrupt the reading experience.

And the best part?

Their About section tells us that they’re just a couple figure-skating fans who want to share their passion and knowledge with the world.

Brilliant.

How to use Facebook to drive traffic to your blog

Facebook most likely has the most extensive monetization guidelines out of any platform operating online. Here’s a summary list of “rules” you can cross-reference when aiming to monetize:

1. Create a Facebook page.
   (Pick Business or Brand).
2. Invite friends to like your page. Only invite those you believe will find value in your brand. (Ask them individually through Facebook messenger to increase the chances that they’ll actually like your page).
3. Ask them if they know anyone who might be interested in your page as well.
4. Ask them to share your page. (The worst thing they can say is “no”. Most likely will, but even for one or two shares, this step is worth doing).
5. Start sharing great content from around the Internet related to your niche. 
   Remember: The best content is content your audience will find helpful and interesting.
   
6. Start sharing your blog content once in a while too and go from there. (Facebook likes frequent and consistent posts that get a ton of engagement, so do try to create and follow an editorial calendar).
7. Engage with every user who leaves a comment. (There’s a good chance they could turn into your next fan!)

Engagement: The secret ingredient to boosting your page content

I’m going to risk sounding repetitive here, but we come back to a critical principle:

Not every fan is created equal.

That means not every like is equal as well. If you add random people to your groups and Facebook pages, you’re only going to confuse Facebook’s analytics tools, and it’ll become real difficult for you to earn money from Facebook (page, group, or otherwise).

That means when you try to use tools to analyze your audience, you won’t be able to determine their interests accurately, or their needs, or even who they really are.

And what does that mean when you post your content?

Total engagement from your entire fan base will be low, because people who aren’t interested in your content aren’t going to engage, especially on any meaningful level.

Low engagement will tell Facebook that your content sucks, even when it’s awesome.

On the other hand, if you have a small but engaged fan base, whenever you post content, you’ll be telling Facebook your content is relevant (one of the main metrics Facebook uses to determine the quality of your ads).

So what awesome added benefit can you gain from this slower approach that’s been proven time and again to work?

It keeps ad costs low.

That’s right.

Because Facebook understands that your group or page is highly concentrated with an active and engaged audience, your ads will cost you less money over time. This also means a higher conversion rate, because the offers you promote will be highly relevant to your target audience.

Affiliate marketing: A quick and easy way to monetize Facebook pages

Affiliate marketing is a quick way to monetize Facebook pages.

1. Pick a niche you’re interested in.
2. Become an affiliate by signing up for an Amazon Associates or Clickbank account.
3. Push products in your niche and start collecting commission. (Some products pay up to 70% the retail price).

See this example above? These shoes are basically selling themselves.

How to earn from Facebook groups

Compared to trying to monetize Facebook pages, Facebook group monetization is much easier.

That’s because Facebook provides a lot more flexibility in terms of how you can frame the context of your group.

For example, you can label it a Support Group, thus helping your group members perceive it as a resource.  

This makes it much easier to persuade other Facebook users to join as well. (Think about how much faster you can build your Facebook group, where people come to view you as a resource and a source of support, an authority they can communicate with directly on a social platform).

So how do you start to monetize your Facebook fans and followers?

In a similar way you would with a Facebook page–but remember the context:

This is a Facebook support group. Do not think about just pushing content. Here you’re building your brand and your authority.

You’re creating loyal fans.

Your Facebook page, on the other hand, is a business page. (Your page members will be a little more forgiving when you present your offers here).

How to Generate Revenue From Your Facebook Fan Page

How to Generate Revenue From Your Facebook Fan Page

Published by James Parsons

Most people these days simply refer to Facebook Fan Pages as simply Pages, and for a good reason; the era of their use primarily as pages for fan worship is long past. Today, Pages are used as marketing hubs and tools to build communities around certain brands, entities, events and media.

It’s entirely possible to make money from Facebook, though there are two different, non-exclusive ways to go about it. Which you choose depends on your goals, your resources and the nature of your business. You can even use them both, if you have several paths to monetization.

Step 1: Create a Page

Both the easiest and the hardest part of the whole process is properly creating your Page. Make sure you choose the proper classification; some types of pages are limited in what they can do and what they can display, while others have additional features specifically for that type of entity. Picking the wrong one will hamper you. Likewise, be careful in selecting the name you use. You can change your name and URL once, but it’s not easy; Facebook doesn’t want you to casually rebrand at the drop of a hat.

Take care when setting up your Page with all of the information you can fit in. This includes, primarily, you About section. The About section requires several sentences as a description of your business, a link to your main business page – essential if you ever hope to be verified, among other things – and your industry.

Your profile picture and cover photo are crucial as well. No one trusts a Page without a cover photo, for example. Your profile picture can be as simple as a recognizable shot of your logo, or you can jazz it up for a special event. It’s a good idea to change up these pictures every few months, as long as they stay recognizably branded.

Step 2: Build an Audience

When you’re first starting out, you can upload a mailing list if you have one, and Facebook will cross-check those emails with valid Facebook accounts. Any user who maintains a Facebook account with that email address will be given the option to like your page. You might want to hold off on doing this until you have some content on your page, though.

For content, you’re going to want to post and schedule several posts for the coming days. Ideally, you’ll post interesting industry content, content from your blog, content from other partner blogs and general interest content your users like. You might not know what works best yet, but time and study will reveal those secrets to you.

Once you have some content, you can upload your mailing list. You can also employ other techniques for growing your page, including running paid ads if you have the budget to do so.

Step 3: Funnel the Audience to a Monetized Page

This is the first of the two options you have to monetize your Facebook Page, and it’s not entirely just monetizing Facebook. See, the primary purpose of this method is to funnel people away from Facebook and on to pages where people can actually earn you money.

See, you can’t just run affiliate ads on Facebook. They don’t even really like affiliate links, though you can get away with those in organic posts. So, instead, you lead people off-site and on to your own website, blog, or storefront.

You can do this through ads and you can do this through posting content on your site and linking to it on Facebook. In fact, you should be doing both. Every person who visits your site from Facebook is a possible conversion.

You can’t really use optimized landing pages in organic posts. Facebook doesn’t like organic posts being dominated by such advertising. They’ll deliver a hit to your organic reach and make it harder for your other messages to make it through. Ads, however, can and should always link to an optimized landing page.

Once the users have left Facebook and landed on your website, you have all the flexibility and power of SEO and conversion rate optimization available to use.

Step 4: Create a Facebook App Store

The second option available is to run a store directly on Facebook. If you do this, you can potentially eliminate off-site marketing entirely. It’s not as effective as having your own store – people prefer to shop off Facebook, and you lose the presence of a good blog – but it’s perfectly acceptable.

There are a number of services you can use to set up a store in a tab app, including Shopify. The idea is that the service will create and host a storefront for you, and Facebook will become the portal to that store.

Note that such a store is in a tab app, which is somewhat limited in use on Facebook. You have one space in the top bar for your store to be labeled, but it’s not a fancy graphical label like tabs used to be. The graphical label is on the left sidebar some ways down the page. It’s not a lot, so you have to put a little extra effort into linking directly to your shop at every opportunity, so people know where to find it.

Step 5: Engage, Maintain, Grow

Once you have the path to monetization set up, everything else is about maintenance and growth. You have to grow your fan base, which you can do by posting compelling content and running advertisements that ask for page likes. You have to engage those users so they keep seeing your posts and thus are continually exposed to the idea of your business, leading them to like you more and potentially convert. And, of course, you have to maintain your store and your sales funnel so that you never miss sales due to a broken line of code or a missing product.

Your bread and butter with this process is going to be Insights. Study your Facebook insights and learn your audience. Cater your messages and your products to their needs and desires. Get them where they want it, and they’ll give you money to do so.

New Methods

As of 2018, there are a few new methods you can use to generate revenue: sponsored posts and shoutouts, selling products, and dropshipping. However, reach is also more delicate these days, so you don’t want to annoy your fanbase. Look into the 80/20 rule, which says 80% of your content should be useful or funny content that isn’t business-related, and 20% should be on any of the above; things that could potentially drive revenue to your page. Users don’t log into Facebook just to be sold things, they want to see what their favorite people and brands are up to. So, don’t sell too hard, and focus on creating great content.

Six ways to ensure your CV beats the ATS robots

Six ways to ensure your CV beats the ATS robots
====================

The most dispiriting aspect of job-hunting for many people is the stream of standardised rejection emails. These often appear arbitrary, as if no one has actually bothered reading your CV.

That’s probably because they haven’t.

In fact, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), or ‘Resume Robots’ as they’re disparagingly called, now reject up to 75% of CVs before they even get to a human.

Applying for jobs is much easier these days thanks to online applications, jobs boards and the ‘Apply Now’ button on LinkedIn. However, as a result, recruiters now receive a flood of digital CVs for every vacancy. They use ATS, despite its shortfalls, to cut through this clutter and find the right applicant.

An ATS creates shortlists from thousands of candidates on a recruiter’s database. If the ATS doesn’t understand your CV, it won’t select it. Consequently, a human recruiter won’t even set eyes on it.

Whether you are a graduate or C-suite executive, you need to prepare your CV for the ATS challenge or risk missing potentially ideal opportunities.

How to speak robot
It’s not all doom and gloom. There are ways to boost the chances of ATS giving your CV a high ranking.

The better your score, the more likely it is to go to a real human being, who might call you for interview. The main thing to know is that ATS acts like a specialised search engine. That means you have to write in an ATS-friendly way – it’s a bit like Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for CVs.

Here are six steps to speaking fluent résumé robot and avoiding being lost in digital translation.

Stay glued to the platform.......
1. Keyword research:

Do you remember the last time you looked up something on a search engine? Well the words you used in that search were ‘keywords’.

Recruiters also use keywords to identify candidates with desired skills and qualifications. The ATS tries to find these keywords in candidate CVs. This is why the keywords you use can make or break your job search.

The first step is to get your keywords right but this isn’t straightforward because they’re constantly evolving. That’s one reason why people are increasingly using professional CV writers.

However, you can make a good start by checking job descriptions on employer’s websites and industry related job portals.

Find and note the keywords used in the job overview and candidate specifications. Focus on both the role and industry in which you want to work.

The role of an industrial marketing manager might use different keywords to that of a FMCG marketing manager. If there are different versions of the same keyword, then search for both to see which one returns the most relevant results.

2. Target titles:

Always use standard job titles in your keywords, particularly if your title in your current or former roles was a little offbeat.

‘Brand Warrior’ may sound quite cool but an ATS is unlikely to pick it up and even a human might struggle to translate it as ‘Marketing Manager’. Use this keyword title as the headline on your CV and adapt it to different job applications.

For example, you may need to change ‘Marketing Manager’ to ‘Head of Marketing’, ‘Marketing Communications Manager’, ‘Product Manager’ or ‘Brand Manager’ depending on the job ad to which you’re responding.

This ensures you’re including the most important keywords. It also aligns you in the mind of a human reader with the vacant role they are trying to fill.

3. Skills and experience, but no fluff
Make sure you include all the skills most relevant to the job. For example, did you manage a team? Did you have P&L responsibilities? Have you presented at industry related conferences or launched new products in new markets?

Tangible outcomes make the difference here. In a tough job market, you need a proven, measurable background of success to impress potential employers. When recruiters search for keywords, they are looking for concrete skills. They won’t be typing in ‘out-going’ or ‘team player’.

People have overused phrases such as ‘results-focused’ to the point of irrelevance. It’s the specific, highly relevant achievements, where you’ve used your talent to give an employer a measurable benefit, that will get you noticed.

Work out what those achievements or strengths are; then connect them in words or phrases to a target job description. Those are more of your keywords.

Good CV writing is all about the effective highlighting and presentation of objective achievements, alongside optimising your keywords. You need to customise these achievements for each role.

Be the candidate they want.

If you’re applying for a senior executive role or leadership position, your CV needs to follow the target job specification with precision. It also needs to demonstrate a senior level of management responsibility.

Identify the most important leadership keywords, such as ‘staff training and development’ and make sure they appear throughout your CV.

The principles remain the same for a good graduate CV. But you need to convey a different skill-set, demonstrating potential, motivation and commitment.

4. Qualifications:

Try to make your qualifications relate to the specific job. What software packages and technical skills does this role require? Do you need to have any specialist industry qualifications like the ICAN,NSE,NIS,etc ? Remember to include both the acronym and the keyword or phrase.

5. CV formatting:

It’s always frustrating not to get an interview for the perfect job. Now think how you’d feel knowing it was just because the ATS rejected your CV’s formatting. This is a simple problem to avoid. You just have to remember that most ATS algorithms won’t read your CV if it includes:

Graphics or symbols of any kind, except for simple bullet points (like this one)
Lots of different fonts (styles, sizes or colours). Stick to two or three maximum and save
CAPITALISATION for SECTION HEADERS such as ‘PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE’
Tables (use tabs instead)
These don’t just confuse the ATS. Most companies now delete photos to ensure they can’t discriminate based on age, race, sex, or hair colour – or anything else they might see.

6. Consistency:
It’s important for an overall job strategy that your CV and LinkedIn profile use similar keywords. This will help you maximise the effectiveness of your job search. It also signals consistency and attention to detail for recruiters.

One last (key) word; always be truthful, don’t exaggerate or lie because it’s hard to repair your credibility when a recruiter catches you out. Ultimately, you and your CV need to impress humans, not just robots.

Decoding the job search means not letting technology stand between you and the dream job you are qualified to do. It’s not about trying to trick the algorithms; the robots are too clever for that anyway.

10 things Firms/Coy or Human Resource Managers use in Review CVs submitted by job seekers

10 things Firms/Coy or Human Resource Managers use in Review CVs submitted by job seekers

It can be hard to know where to start, particularly if a firm/coy got lots of CVs to work through and want/need to hire someone sooner rather than later.
The main problem with CVs is that they’re all obviously all different – so it can be really hard to compare them side by side. That said; there are certain things you should be on the lookout for in any CV, regardless of the role or the industry, that can suggest the candidate is on the ball and worth considering.
Just to clarify; some of the points below may sound pretty obvious – but new hiring managers and recruiters who have never reviewed a CV before might not be familiar with some of the points or know why they’re important – so I thought we should include them anyway.

1. Consistent Formatting:

The format of a CV is really important because it speaks volumes about the candidate. From different styles and sizes of font to random bold, italic and underlined sections, dodgy formatting is not a good look – and it suggests the candidate doesn’t care too much about details and looking professional – two traits that aren’t attractive to any employer. Look out for CVs which have consistent formatting (style, font size and typography), are structured into concise, digestible paragraphs – and which look pleasant to the eye.

2. Logical Order:

In addition to the format of the CV, you also need to look closely at the way in which the CV has been ordered. When looking at the order of a CV, consider what has been placed at the beginning and what has been placed at the end. In an ideal world, the most relevant information should be placed at the beginning of the CV.
The contact details should be easy to find (normally at the start of the CV) and the most recent jobs should be placed at the beginning, followed by skills and experience. This is a logical, sensible order for a CV – so if the candidate has used a different order – it might suggest they take alternative approaches when completing key tasks. While this isn’t necessarily always a bad thing, it could be an issue if the candidate is applying for a job which has lots of procedures and protocol to follow.

3. No Typos (Attention To Detail):

Just like the formatting issue, spellings and typos are also a big issue and should be carefully considered. Thanks to spell check and Google, there’s really no excuse for typos and poor spellings – and the existence of these in a CV could suggest the candidate has poor attention to detail and rushes their work so they don’t always spot obvious mistakes.

4. Skills & Experience That Match Your Vacancy:

OK, so this is one of the most obvious ones – on a candidate’s CV, you need to look out for any skills and experience that match the particular vacancy you have on offer. It should be easy to spot relevant skills on a good CV – and the best candidates should have highlighted them to make it even easier for you. If the CV you’re reviewing doesn’t have any of the skills and experience you’re looking for, it doesn’t necessarily mean the candidate doesn’t have them – but in that situation, you have to ask why they didn’t include them on that CV when they knew that’s what you were looking for! Which leads me nicely onto my next point…

5. Tailoring To Your Vacancy:

The best candidates will have tailored their CV to your particular vacancy – so this is something you need to be on the lookout for. Keep an eye out for candidates who have tried to relate their skills and experience to the role you’re recruiting for as this is a sign they’re really keen on the role and have spent time trying to make their CV as relevant as possible.

6. Employment Gaps:

Another thing to look for on a CV is employment gaps. In this economy, sometimes gaps in employment can’t be avoided – but if that is the case, the candidate should always try and explain why there was this gap and what they did during this period. This might just consist of a brief sentence on the CV – or a more detailed explanation in their cover letter. The most important thing is the candidate has been honest and hasn’t tried to hide the fact they’ve had gaps in their employment history.

7. Clear Progression:

Next up, when looking at CVs you should be on the lookout for signs that the candidate has made clear progression within their chosen career path. This might be illustrated by the fact that they’ve progressed from an executive level through to a managerial level – or the fact they’ve sidestepped into different areas. Either way, clear signs of progression suggest the candidate is ambitious and isn’t willing to rest on their laurels.

8. Rounded Skillset:

In addition to relevant skills, you should also be on the lookout for signs of a rounded skillset when reviewing CVs. By this I mean that on a CV you need to look out for a mix of technical and more personal, ‘softer’ skills. This mix shows the candidate is well rounded and will be able to cope with all elements of your role.

9. Concise:

If the CV you’re reviewing is five pages long, you might want to reconsider. Why? Because it suggests the candidate isn’t able to keep things concise and to the point and they like to ramble – all elements which probably aren’t attractive to any employer. Look out for paragraphs on CVs which are tight, consise, to the point and – most importantly – relevant!

10. No Cliches:

Last but not least, you need to be on the lookout for cliches when reviewing CVs. Some of the most common CV cliches include phrases like “can work independently or as part of team”, “self-starter” and “results-driven”. The problem? They’re cliches and make the CV morph into the next. While CVs which include lots of cliches aren’t necessarily bad, they can suggest the candidate lacks originality and perhaps isn’t the unique employee you’re looking for.

So there we go; 10 things a firm or coy should be looking out for when reviewing CVs for your vacancy. Don’t agree with any of my points or think I’ve missed something out?