Marie has been a Talent Acquisition Partner for the EMEA region at PayPal for 9 years and focuses on hiring corporate functions across the region. She began her career in international business development in Germany and then Belgium, before moving back to Germany. While living in Berlin, Marie started her journey in recruitment working for multiple digital companies which eventually led her to PayPal. Her career in recruitment has spanned over 12 years.
Today, Marie is sharing some tips on how to catch the attention of the recruiter with your application. Here’s what she says.
Recruiters review hundreds of CVs each day, which means we spend on average 10 seconds to decide whether your CV will be part of the first selection and reviewed further in detail. That´s why your CV needs to be spot on.
Before applying, you need to do some preparation work by first defining your hard and soft skills as well as your career goals. The hard skills are the ones you will include in your CV, these are your “technical skills,” they will be your path to the interview. Your soft skills are the ones you learn with your experience, like your ability to collaborate or work in an international environment. Now think about your career goals and consider the skills you still need to develop to achieve them and list them too.
Do you have your list of hard and soft skills ready? Now is the time to analyze the job description, ask yourself: what are the requirements (must versus nice to have)? To get a sense of how it is to work at PayPal you should explore the PayPal career site which is full of information and our PayPal stories where you will find the latest news about the company. Are the company and this role aligned with your own personal goals? Are you matching 60-70% of the must-haves criteria? If the answer is yes, then you are ready to prepare your application documents. We know the confidence gap and imposter syndrome can get in the way of meeting spectacular candidates. Please don’t hesitate to apply.
Each company and role will have a diverse set of requirements and expectations, so your application documents should be adapted for every single application. This is a bit of extra effort, but it will pay off as you will be showing exactly what the recruiter needs to see.
Keep your CV short and simple! A few well-targeted bullet points on your CV for each role, a clear presentation with no need for a lot of colors or fancy graphs. The recruiter needs to find the information quickly. The length of the CV should reflect your experience: 1 page for a graduate/young professional and up to 3 pages if you are very experienced. Be factual and objective when describing your experience (e.g., a product manager may have different responsibilities from one company to the next), highlight the skills and experience that are relevant to the role you are applying for and list achievements in a quantifiable way. A competencies section could be interesting too as you may list skills acquired with non-professional experiences. You will have the opportunity to describe your skills/experiences in depth during the interview.
In your cover letter, do not repeat your CV! Emphasize your soft skills and how they fit into the role and requirements. Mention 1-2 projects you’ve worked on and how you demonstrated these skills. Like the CV, your letter should be short, 1 page with 4-5 paragraphs of 3-4 sentences max. The classic 3 paragraph format is the company, yourself, and both (what I can bring to the table and how it will benefit the company). It is better to write less but really be personalized and authentic.
Finally, once everything is ready to send out, take a break and review again later with fresh eyes. If possible, have your CV and cover letter reviewed by someone who is ideally in a different role to check if all is clear and understandable (no jargon or acronyms!).
Once you have gone through all these steps, you should have prepared a solid application. You can now go on the PayPal career site and apply for the role.