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Your Quick Guide to the Master CV

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What is the ‘Master CV’?

The Master CV is the key to success with our solution. Whereas other proposal tools might use several types of Master CVs for different projects or departments, CV Partner's approach simplifies knowledge CV management - for individual users and your database as a whole:

  • Each employee maintains a single Master CV.
  • This records their complete work history and experiences, along with personal qualifications.
  • The Master CV grows as an employee’s project portfolio grows.
  • You can also include information from work an individual completed before they joined your organisation.
Preview of the Master CV

How do you build a Master CV? How is it structured?

We always recommend our out-of-the box configurations to receive optimal benefits in the quickest timeframe. By starting with pre-defined category-tags and templates for your organisation, you can ensure individual CVs remain consistent with company-wide processes. 

However, CV Partner is built to be flexible, adapting to our clients’ evolving demands. There are then two ways to update a CV depending on a user’s specific user permissions:

  • the account user can simply update relevant fields themselves
  • an authorised user ( a project manager/leader or department head for example) can create a standardised ‘Validated Project Description, which can then be added to multiple Master CVs at once. This gives enhanced data consistency in your database. Individuals simply add a short summary of their personal contribution on the project. (read more about Validated Project Descriptions)
  • authorised users also have the functionality to make corrections or updates across multiple CVs, for example to alter a spelling mistake or rename a category (similar to the process of adding Master Project Descriptions)  

How do I use a Master CV?

The function of a Master CV is to provide a database that organises information in a way that makes sense for your business. 

However, the Master CV can also do much more than that.

For instance, usually when you need to add someone’s CV to a new proposal, it would be undesirable or impractical to include their entire CV. But creating a custom CV, for each prospective client would also be time-consuming, leaving multiple ‘dead’ customised CVs that can't be reused, clogging up your system. Finding the right CVs to include in a proposal across multiple departments or locations can also be challenging.

But the Master CV provides simple, elegant solutions to these problems:

CV Customisation. Instantly create a tailored CV for inclusion in a new proposal. Start by copying a snapshot of the chosen Master CV into the proposal document with a single click. This snapshot can now be edited, to alter the text or layout and hide elements or sections of the CV. Include what you want, in the way you want it. Simple, fast CV customisation.

CV snapshots in proposal

Company Search. Find relevant CVs, skills or qualifications across your enterprise, to discover more about who knows what

Search Two Ways. Use fixed search fields or our free-text functionality; or combine the two. Here are some examples to show you how it works:

  • You might have a field ‘French’ under languages, and searching for this will give results for all French speaking employees across the company
  • Or, search ‘French’ under free text and get results with different possibilities: all employees working in your French office; all employees who speak French; all employees who have worked on a project in France
  • Use the defined skill  ‘javascript’ combined with a free-text search for ‘France’ and get results with possibilities for anyone who: speaks French; works in your French office; or has worked on a project in France; but only if their CV lists javascript as a skill
  • You can also apply a search filter to results you have already generated, to give you more advanced results; if a filter has a zero value (no relevant results), the filter will not be displayed
  • Access and view results across multiple CVs, without having to enter each one individually, with relevant projects and other categories displayed in the results page

What else do I need to know?

Once a user has set up their CV, keeping it up to date is straightforward and fast. The Project Manager adds new projects for them, making it necessary to just fill in a few selected details. 

The great advantage for this approach is that it also provides a further incentive for your teams to keep their CV up to date; by providing more complete data on their CV, they start to appear in more relevant search results. This equals more interesting and relevant projects for the individual, with more in-depth data for your bid team to generate higher quality proposals. A win-win.    

The Master CV is a simple approach to enriching your proposal management process, helping bid teams to optimise how they collect data and it present to external stakeholders. 

The Master CV. One CV for everything you know and more.  

Learn more by contacting CV Partner