What are the absolute must-haves for a strong CV and a professional online presence (like LinkedIn) that actually get noticed?
I’m going through this trauma right now.
What I’ve learnt is that your CV and covering lettering will initially not be read by anyone. Most companies use Applicant Tracking System, which means that something like 80% of all applications are not read by a real person. So you have to start gaming the system - use AI to beat AI.
- Keep you CV short - it doesn’t matter if you’ve got 50 years’ experience keep your CV to one or at the most two pages.
- Make it easy for the AI to scan your CV. Have sections for: Profile, Employment history, Education and Skills.
- Then use AI against AI - I’ve been using resume.io but I am sure there are other sites. You can upload you CV, it will review it in general, BUT ,wait for this!, you can then point resume.io at the job description you are applying for and it will give you tips on how to improve your CV for the specific job. And it writes a covering letter! Obviously it is sometimes over-eager and says stuff about you that is blatantly untrue - but you can edit this to make it yours - to own it. You can can choose different layouts download the finished docs and then submit then.
I started doing this 2 weeks ago and now have 2 interviews 
You can then use your crafted CV as the basis of your on line profile.