Module 4 – Connect with their emotions

Companies often hire for “Culture Add.” This means they are asking themselves the questions:

• “What are you adding to my culture?”
• “What part will you play?”
• “How will you stretch and expand my team?”

A CV that focuses on nothing but what technologies you used is sure to miss the “Culture Add” mark. 

You aren’t going to draw the attention of the hirer and make them spend more time than it takes for a cursory glance at your CV.

The goal is to connect emotionally with the hirer so show something of yourself.

So, let’s leverage your personal brand. What do people think of when they think of you? (You’re a great communicator, you see things from a different perspective, you work well in a team, you’re creative, you have a broad knowledge depth so you can come up with different solutions to problems).

Show your personality and what makes you a unique individual.

Show that you have soft skills as well as your hard skills. Soft skills encompass communication, cross team collaboration, creativity, problem solving, mentoring junior developers or interns, time management skills, adaptability.

You could expand those soft skills to give more detail such as you collaborated with the design and product team to implement a new feature.

These are all qualities which make you into more than a name on a CV to the hirer and connect you to their emotions.

Action points

• Read through your CV, particularly your Personal Statement. Consider putting your personal projects on your CV (hobbies, websites or your Github profile). This shows the projects you work on outside of your employment.
• Besides your hard skills, do you have any soft skills to add in there?
• Make sure you have them in your “Personal Statement” up front and prominent in your CV.

Examples