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By Winnie Ayero | 08 April 2022
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell just as sweet". According to William Shakespeare, the naming of things is irrelevant. Or is it? Well, not in the professional world. We review loads of CVs at Great First Impression and notice many things as far as names and naming are concerned and I would like to highlight a few of them:
Order of Names. In Africa we often write our names starting with our surnames - Ayero Winnie and it becomes so ingrained in us that even when we are filling in forms that clearly show First name, Last name we still sometimes get it wrong. LinkedIn for instance, clearly starts with First name on their preset profile information but I still sometimes come across profiles when I'm doing client LinkedIn makeovers where a Last name comes before the first name and has to be edited and corrected. It is seems obvious, but may not always be.
Number of Names. I reviewed a CV recently that had 5 names on it, no kidding. Now here's the thing: it is not necessary to put all your 5 or more names on your CV. First Name and Last Name are good enough, you may add a middle name or an initial of it but it is not a do or die. Having too many names on your CV will actually make you more forgettable than memorable, which is not what you want.
Women's marital and maiden names. So you were single and got married and took on your husband's last name? Or were married and divorced and need to fall back on your maiden name? How do you take care of this slippery slope? It is not as complicated as it appears but it is important. Recruiters do due diligence, also known as background checks, on job applicants that they are interested in and it is important that they can verify that you are the same person. There are two ways to take care of this; assuming you were Jane Smith as a spinster and then married a John Doe:
Write your full name including the marital name as follows: Jane Smith Doe or Jane (Smith) Doe
Write your marital name and reference your maiden name: Jane Doe and in a smaller font in italics under write "formerly Jane Smith".
Use the same approach in case you need to fall back on your maiden name from a marital name.
4. Email Addresses. I have reviewed some CVs of high level executives with less-than professional email addresses. In the case of electronic applications, before anyone opens your application, they will first see your email address and if it looks like spam, it may very well get deleted before it is opened. Do yourself a favour, use a professional email address, preferably one with your name - this also makes it easy to find your email address if they need to search for it to write back to you.
5. Saving application documents. How do you name your job application documents? If a job advert does not specify how to save your documents, the safest way to save is with your name and the advertised job title. For instance if I were applying for a Country Head of Human Resources role, I would save my CV as Winnie_Ayero_Country_Head_of_Human_Resources. Capitalise first letters and use dashes or hyphens to separate text. Why? Because most ATS systems save your documents as a URL and it is just easier to work with this type of saving for URLs.
So there you have it - names and naming are neither irrelevant nor negligible in professional contexts. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive weekly publications on career related topics delivered directly to your email inbox.
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This article is also published in the GFI Newsletter on LinkedIn
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