The CV of The Future

When you send an email with your CV attached talking about your experience and then requesting a meeting to discuss your profile in more detail, the only person’s KPIs you are focused on is your own. If you want other people to take an interest in you, you need to take an interest in other people. Your relationships in business are very similar to your bank account. You can’t make a withdrawal until you have made a deposit. When you send a CV, that is exactly what you are trying to do. You are trying to encourage the company to give you something (a salary) before you have given them anything (generated results).

How do you make a deposit? Providing a professional with information that helps them achieve their KPIs is one way of making a deposit. That is, after all, why they are hiring you – so you can help them achieve their professional goals. Every profession provides a huge value to the community and to individual businesses. The best CV, in my estimation having been in this industry for almost 20 years, is not a CV but a document which highlights how your job or position provides value to the organization and what the latest, most cutting-edge ways are that companies are using your skills and profession to deliver bottom-line results.

The bedrock of this process lies in your intellectual curiosity which includes reading the latest books, articles, and doing other research about your profession, talking to the industry leaders, attending trade shows and events, and, of course, putting these strategies to work in your day to day work.

Let us take the field of marketing and the approach of talking to industry leaders as an example. Our first task is to determine who the top ten highest-paid chief marketing officers are in the world. In an article by Forbes Magazine, they list the highest-paid CMOs of publicly traded, large-cap, US companies. I will change the names and companies as the point is not to list them. Topping the ranking was a gentleman, let’s call him “John,” who was president of Products and Marketing at an IT storage company who earned $6,903,485 a year. The second highest-paid was another gentleman, let’s call him “Ernie,” who was executive vice president of Marketing and Sales for a logistics and transportation company and earned $6,685,500. While I have changed the names of the candidates, and the companies; the salaries are real.

If you love your job and are genuinely interested in marketing, then this is an exercise you definitely should do as it will give you added insight into your profession. Even if you are not looking for a job, this is an exercise you should do if you are serious about your career. Requesting an interview with these extremely accomplished professionals will have great currency for you, and you can compile their answers in a white paper and email it to your target audience which is your new boss. If you are truly passionate about what you do, then it will not be work, it will be a pleasure.

Sending an article such as “The Highest Paid CMOs in America Tell Their Top Three Strategies to Brand Your Company” is something most CEOs would read; your CV is not. Thought-leadership content is the new CV in the digital era. Before. you had to be a veritable journalist to get published. Today, you can be published at the click of a button. Use the change in times to your advantage and let your voice shine across cyberspace. You can also share your content on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a great platform to showcase your thought-leadership content.

If you are a CMO and are looking for a job, you should research the best-selling marketing books on, for example, Amazon. In fact, one of Amazon’s top-selling books at the time of my writing is Chaos Monkeys by Antonio Martinez, and one line in it really caught my attention: “Marketing is like sex; only losers pay for it.” You can imagine anyone who elaborates on this statement will get some attention.

The key is to research your industry. Who are the movers and shakers, and who is defining the industry? How are they defining it, and what are the latest trends we can identify and utilize to drive results? Summarize these and present them to the world with your own point of view embedded in the content. This is the CV of the future. This will separate you from the crowd.