{"id":224,"date":"2016-08-22T14:12:03","date_gmt":"2016-08-22T14:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/career-tips\/?p=224"},"modified":"2016-08-22T14:12:03","modified_gmt":"2016-08-22T14:12:03","slug":"valuemycv-frequently-asked-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/valuemycv-frequently-asked-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"ValueMyCV &#8211; Frequently Asked Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/jobs\/value-my-cv\/upload?utm_source=career-tips&amp;utm_medium=article&amp;utm_campaign=vmcvfaq\">ValueMyCV<\/a> tool has left you scratching your head you&#8217;ve come to the right place. We&#8217;ve collected the most frequently asked questions users have about the tool and collected them on this handy webpage.<\/p>\n<p>Can&#8217;t find what you&#8217;re looking for? If your questions aren&#8217;t answered here (or you have ideas for how to make ValueMyCV even better) please\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/contact-us.html\">get in touch<\/a>!<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Contents<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p><strong><a href=\"#General\">General<br \/>\n<\/a><\/strong>&#8211; Why can\u2019t I get my salary estimate?<br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"#Salary Estimate\">Salary Estimate<br \/>\n<\/a><\/strong>&#8211; My salary estimate is way too high\/too low. What gives?<br \/>\n&#8211; Why do I get slightly different valuations depending on the file format of my CV?<br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"#Summary\">Summary<br \/>\n<\/a><\/strong>&#8211;\u00a0How do you create the summary text? It\u2019s not right for me.<br \/>\n&#8211;\u00a0Why is the summary saying I have no\/little management experience? It\u2019s wrong.<br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"#Skills Cloud\">Skills Cloud<br \/>\n<\/a><\/strong><strong><a href=\"#CV Booster\">CV Booster<br \/>\n<\/a><\/strong>&#8211;\u00a0<strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Summary test: Why does CV Booster say it can\u2019t find a summary in my CV when there is one?<\/span><br \/>\n<\/strong>&#8211; Spelling: Why isn\u2019t my word in your dictionary?<br \/>\n&#8211; Spelling: Why are extra spaces appearing in some of my words?<br \/>\n&#8211; I\u2019ve changed my CV and improved my CV Booster score but it hasn\u2019t changed my salary estimate. Why not?<br \/>\n<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8211; Employment history: Why hasn\u2019t the model correctly extracted by employment history?<\/span><br \/>\n&#8211; Why doesn\u2019t it find my email\/address\/phone number?<br \/>\n&#8211; Why is my address important? Isn\u2019t all communication these days by email or phone?<strong><a href=\"#Skills Cloud\"><br \/>\n<\/a><a href=\"#Career Explorer\">Career Explorer<br \/>\n<\/a><\/strong>-Why isn\u2019t my last job title recognised?<br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"#Accepted Formats\">Accepted Formats<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"General\">\n<h2>General<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\n<div id=\"General 1\"><strong>Why can\u2019t I get my salary estimate?<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The format can\u2019t be recognised (or the CV is a scanned imaged). See our list of <a href=\"#Accepted Formats\">accepted formats<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">No skills have been found on your CV &#8211; a minimum of one\u00a0skill is needed<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your CV is unusually long or short.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"Salary Estimate\">\n<h2><b>Salary<\/b> Estimate<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>My salary estimate is way too high\/too low. What gives?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The estimate is calculated on a large number of factors. If it looks very wrong:\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check that the version of ValueMyCV you are using is correct for your country (ValueMyCV is currently live in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/jobs\/value-my-cv\/\">UK<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.adzuna.com\/value-my-resume\/\">USA<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.adzuna.com.au\/value-my-cv\/upload\">Australia<\/a>\u00a0and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.adzuna.de\/value-my-cv\/upload\">Germany<\/a>). <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check that the core data has been extracted properly. This includes: years of experience and management experience (from the summary text) and your employment history (from CV Booster).<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check that the skills cloud reflects your skills. Even if you think a skill is obvious (such as MS\u00a0Excel) it is often worth including &#8211; especially if it is a technical skill.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make sure any further education qualifications are clearly shown on your CV.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Academic CVs are tough for the model to handle. To help get an accurate salary estimate we recommend that you use the title of \u2018Work Experience\u2019 above your list of previous academic posts and keep this separate from your \u2018Education\u2019 section.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Check this <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/career-tips\/cvs-cover-letters\/how-to-get-your-cv-seen-by-a-recruiter\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">list of tips<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> to help you ensure your CV can be correctly read by a computer. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Why do I get slightly different valuations depending on the file format of my CV?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We convert every file into plain text before we analyse it. This means that our plain text version of your CV is likely to be slightly different from your original. These slight differences can sometimes affect the valuation. This will be more noticeable if your CV has special formatting such as\u00a0tables\u00a0or a\u00a0column-layout. Incidentally the .pdf format tends to be the least robust for conversion to plain text and so we recommend .doc or .docx.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"Summary\">\n<h2><b>Summary<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>How do you create the summary text? It\u2019s not right for me.<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The summary text we provide is automatically generated by industry standard CV parsing software. Whilst this may not be correct, this is the exact summary that potential employers may read about you when you submit your CV to them. Therefore you should ideally change your CV to fix any issues here. You may like to try:<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Identifying the industries\/sectors of any companies you\u2019ve worked in.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ensuring any skills words you use relate to the correct sector.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Removing any terms\/skills which may imply your experiences is in a different sector. \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Why is the summary saying I have no\/little management experience? It\u2019s wrong.<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The model will only try and recognise people management, so for example a title of \u2018product manager\u2019 won\u2019t necessarily be attributed management experience. You may need to try variants of your job title and\/or role summary.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"Skills Cloud\">\n<h2><b>Skills Cloud<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Similar to the summary text, this skills cloud is extracted by industry-standard software and gives you a good indication of the skills that will be associated with your CV. Imagine a recruiter searching their database for candidates with a certain skill. You need to make sure you explicitly state any relevant skills you have &#8211; even if you think they are obvious and especially if they are technical. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"CV Booster\">\n<h2><b>CV Booster<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Summary test: Why does CV Booster say it can\u2019t find a summary in my CV when there is one?<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most likely cause of this is when there is no heading above the summary text saying something like \u201cSummary\u201d or \u201cProfile\u201d. It is not always possible for the model to differentiate summary text from other information in your CV, and so including a title will make this clear. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Don\u2019t forget, recruiters will typically spend very little time on their initial review of your CV so standardised and logical section titles will help them find the key information they want.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Spelling: Why isn\u2019t my word in your dictionary?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There are various reasons why this may happen:<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We don\u2019t have every word! The English language is constantly evolving. Business\/technical jargon or words comprised of more than one word (such as \u201cstartup\u201d) may be in common usage but may not yet have made it into mainstream dictionaries. It may be a good idea to check with another online dictionary such as <a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.cambridge.org\/\">http:\/\/dictionary.cambridge.org\/<\/a> to see whether your word is widely known. If in doubt, stick with words which are in well-known dictionaries.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If the word is a name of a product (for example \u201cValueMyCV\u201d) then it is unlikely to exist in our dictionary and we will show it as a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Low Risk<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> spelling mistake. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Spelling: \u00a0Why are extra spaces appearing in some of my words?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most common reason for this is because\u00a0your CV is in .pdf format. Extracting text from pdf files is not always reliable. You can check if this is the issue by copying the text and pasting the relevant portion of text into any text editor such as MS Word. Using a format like .doc or .docx should solve this.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>I\u2019ve changed my CV and improved my CV Booster score but it hasn\u2019t changed\u00a0my salary estimate. Why not?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The salary estimate does not take into account issues found with CV Booster. These do not affect your intrinsic market worth, but keep in mind that problems such as spelling mistakes and unaccounted employment gaps may reduce your chances of getting an interview.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Employment history: Why hasn\u2019t the model correctly extracted by employment history?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most common reasons for this are:\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not having a clear section title above your work history. The best title to use is simply \u201cWork Experience\u201d.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Not showing all the following information for each role: job title, company name and the \u2018from\u2019 and \u2018to\u2019 dates you worked there.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Grouping\/nesting different roles within the same company. This causes confusion for both computers and recruiters. \u00a0For example, if you held two different roles at Company X then, rather than have an overall heading of \u2018Company X\u2019 and then showing the two job titles and dates under that, treat them as individual jobs and state job title, company and dates for every role. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Why doesn\u2019t it find my email\/address\/phone number? <\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Make sure that your contact details are not in a footer or header and that they are clearly separated from other text &#8211; ideally on their own line. For absolute clarity you can give give identifiers such as: \u2018Email: <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">myname@domain.com<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2019, \u2018Address: 123, High Street, London, SW6 3BN\u2019 etc<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Why is my address important? Isn\u2019t all communication these days by email or phone?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Your physical address is important because it lets potential employers understand whether your commute will be realistic, and more fundamentally which country you are currently living in. Of course if you are able or planning to move for the right role then great! Just say so on your CV &#8211; \u201c<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Willing to relocate<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201d. Not stating your current address just raises an unnecessary question which you can easily preempt.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"Career Explorer\">\n<h2><b>Career Explorer<\/b><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Why isn\u2019t my last job title recognised?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Career Booster will use the most recent job title on your CV which it is able to match to our ontology of job titles. This means that it may use an older job title if it can\u2019t recognise or find the most recent one. Occasionally it may not be possible to match to any of your past jobs. Of course you should always clearly state your job title for each role on your CV &#8211; it&#8217;s surprisingly common for people to forget to do this or assume it is obvious.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"Accepted Formats\">\n<h2>Accepted Formats<\/h2>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>Adobe Portable Document Format<\/td>\n<td width=\"200\">pdf<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Ami Pro<\/td>\n<td>sam<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>ANSI\/ASCII Text<\/td>\n<td>txt<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>EML files (emails saved by Outlook Express)<\/td>\n<td>eml<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Eudora MBX message files<\/td>\n<td>mbx<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>HTML<\/td>\n<td>htm, html<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>MBOX email archives (including Thunderbird)<\/td>\n<td>mbx<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>MIME HTML (MHTML) web archives<\/td>\n<td>mht<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Multipart MIME &#8211; text\/plain or text\/html parts from SMTP\/MIME messages<\/td>\n<td>&#8211;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>MSG files (emails saved by Outlook)<\/td>\n<td>msg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft Excel<\/td>\n<td>xls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft Excel 2003 XML<\/td>\n<td>xml<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft Excel 2007<\/td>\n<td>xlsx<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft PowerPoint<\/td>\n<td>ppt<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft PowerPoint 2007<\/td>\n<td>pptx<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft Rich Text Format<\/td>\n<td>rtf<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft Word 6.0 to 2003<\/td>\n<td>doc<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft Word 2003 XML<\/td>\n<td>xml<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft Word 2007<\/td>\n<td>docx<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft Word for DOS<\/td>\n<td>doc<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft Word for Windows<\/td>\n<td>doc<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Microsoft Works<\/td>\n<td>wks<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Multimate Advantage II<\/td>\n<td>dox<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Multimate version 4<\/td>\n<td>doc<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>OpenOffice 2.x and 1.x documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, including OASIS Open<\/td>\n<td>&#8211;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Document Format for Office Applications<\/td>\n<td>sxc, sxd, sxi, sxw, sxg, stc, sti, stw, stm, odt, ott, odg, otg, odp, otp, ods, ots, odf<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Unicode Text &#8211; UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32, any byte order, with or without byte order marker<\/td>\n<td>&#8211;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>WordPerfect 5.0 and later<\/td>\n<td>wpd, wpf<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>WordStar versions 4, 5, 6, 2000<\/td>\n<td>ws<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>Write<\/td>\n<td>wri<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>XML Paper Specification (xps) &#8211; version 7.40<\/td>\n<td>&#8211;<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If our ValueMyCV tool has left you scratching your head you&#8217;ve come to the right place. We&#8217;ve collected the most frequently asked questions users have about the tool and collected them on this handy webpage. Can&#8217;t find what you&#8217;re looking for? If your questions aren&#8217;t answered here (or you have ideas for how to make<a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/valuemycv-frequently-asked-questions\/\"> Continued \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cvs-cover-letters"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adzuna.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}