Your CV is an all-important first impression and selling tool. Essentially it is a document that has to convince a prospective future employer that you have the necessary experience and educational background to fulfil their particular role. It must be more than a chronological history of your life; it needs to be corporate, concise and relevant, conveying your skills and experience in the most effective way possible.
To make it stand out amongst the competition the decisions you will need to make are what to leave in and what to take out in order to create the impact that is required whilst still getting the breadth and depth of experience across to the reader. When composing your CV you should consider the following points concerning its purpose and objectives
- Does it inspire the reader to contact me for more information and invite me for an interview?
- Will someone scanning this CV be able to easily extract the relevant information relating to the role I am applying for?
- Are the skills that I have to offer highlighted sufficiently in the CV and are they easy to identify?
- When I am at the interview, will my CV prompt the interviewer to ask me the right questions which will allow me to further ‘sell’ my relevant skills and experience.
Keep your CV as brief and as relevant as you can. The optimum length for a CV is two sides of A4, allowing explanation of the roles and duties performed in your career, yet being concise enough to be read quickly.
Keep the layout professional and uncluttered. Limit paragraphs to five or six lines. Use bullet points to add clarity. Use short sentences. Short sentences are easy to read. Short sentences are more powerful. Check the spelling and make sure that the grammar is correct.
Use positive language to create a good impression by using positive action words such as 'implemented', 'launched', 'developed' and 'reorganised', whilst avoiding tenuous words like 'liaised' that make an employer question what your role was in the process. Show where you added value and how your career skill set advanced as a result.
Listed on the next page are general guidelines on what should be included in every CV, but bear in mind that if you are replying to a specific advert or role, your CV should be adjusted to bring out the strengths that relate to that role and organisation in particular. Many candidates are found through keyword searches on CV databases so ensure that your CV contains all of the relevant keywords for the particular role but remember that this should be a matter of emphasis rather than substance.
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