Your CV is your marketing tool, before you start writing, put yourself in the shoes of the recruiter and think about the skills they will be looking for – your strengths backed up with facts.
Our top ten tips…
- A CV is a sales document. Keep it short and precise – no more than two pages.
- Update the details of your last job / placement – are you still there and will you be immediately available for the job you are applying for?
- Remember to give your full contact details.
- Condense and summarise your information.
- Give an overview of your key achievements, and how they benefited the company, team or line manager. Try to quantify your achievements…improved absence from 5% to 2.6% which saved the company £0.5m pa.
- Exclude your date of birth, age, marital status, nationality etc. – this shouldn’t be used as selection criteria.
- Identify where you are going to add value to the company.
- Never have spelling mistakes or incorrect punctuation.
- Use a professional email address.
- Back up statements with quality facts.
Writing a CV
A good CV will:
- Provide you with a framework to confidently talk about your achievements and capabilities
- Enable you to focus on key points and strengths at an interview
- Help you to identify roles that match your skill set and future objectives
- Demonstrate your ability to order your thinking and present information
- Maximise your chances to be invited to an interview
- Provide evidence that you can work at a high standard with examples
- A CV is a personal document and can contain whatever you think is relevant but I would advise you to take a step back and think of it as a marketing brochure and ask yourself “what is important to sell?, what would you look for in a candidate?”… “What makes me stand out?”
Here are some ideas:
- Factual and Honest
- Clearly laid out
- Concise
- Easy to Understand – Don’t fill with too many acronyms as different organisations use different acronyms
CV Format
A standard CV Format normally contains the following sections:
- Profile - Information about yourself that is factual and concise and showcases your achievements.
- Experience - Most Cvs have a reverse chronological ordering of roles and functional skill base (newest to oldest).
- Education and Qualifications - Emphasise what is most important to the role you are applying for.
- Interests - Include any positions of responsibility or interests outside of work that can show some transferable skills.
CV Presentation
Use the following checklist to make sure your CV is ready to use:
- Spelling (Don’t just change words through spell checker, sense check the new word)
- Grammar
- Sentence Construction
- Consistency of font and tense
- Use appropriate businesslike typeface such as:
- Arial
- Tahoma
- Times New Roman
