How to write a CV that does the job

You CV is likely to be the first contact you have with a potential employer. Follow some simple advice and your CV could be the first step to your new career.

Sell yourself

A CV is a sales brochure in which you are selling yourself. So right at the top of the first page should be your name in large font. There is nothing worse than having to leaf through loads of CVs and struggling to distinguish between candidates. Your name should leap out.

Follow your name with a one sentence description of yourself, wrapped in a clear box. This should be a section that describes your best attributes and why they fit the role for which you are applying. What I'm saying here it that you should tailor your CV to fit the job. Tell the reader why your skills and experience meet their requirements.

Write this sentence, reread and tweak to improve. Then read again, and rewrite again. Keep doing this until it can't get any better. Unless you are applying for really varied roles, I think this is the one bit of your CV that needs to be changed for each application. As it is just one sentence, make it good. Think about the keywords that the interviewer is looking for.

Here's one example a starting point:

Highly motivated, committed and ambitious team leader, with 4 years' experience managing call centre staff, seeking challenging next step in the customer service industry.

Pick out your key skills and experience

Next you should list your last few jobs. For each you should provide a header including:

• Your job title
• The company/employer name
• The dates you worked

Then under each role outline the key duties you performed, and next to each give specific examples of what you achieved or learned. Use bullet points to enhance the legibility.

So each job section could look something like:

Team Leader, Big Company PLC, July 2008 - Present

• Responsible for performance management of 5 agents
• Key role in project to devise new incentive scheme
• Reduced staff sick days by 25%
• Awarded team leader of the month on 5 occasions

Notice how I've picked out key phrases in bold to draw attention to the achievements. Try to write in short, concise statements that are easy to scan. Interviewers like CVs that are easy to speed read, especially when there are lots of applicants.

Make sure you can back up these statements if they arise as questions in the interview. Never lie, as this can go badly wrong in more ways than one.

List your academic achievements

The importance of your qualifications depends on the stage of your career. For your first full time job, these are very important as you won't have much else aside from part time jobs to talk about. At this point, you may want to list individual results for exams and degrees.

Later in your career, your experience is what counts. A summary of your results will be more appropriate at this point. Although you should list any recent vocational qualification or training courses that are relevant.

And for each of your key qualifications, try to list any key knowledge or skills you learned that are relevant to the role, similar to the example for the job role in the previous section.

Be interesting

Your hobbies and interests section should be pretty concise, but try to include at least one talking point, or quirky fact. Your interviewer is likely to be future colleague and so they'll want to work with interesting and stimulating people.

Plus, you'll be setting up an easy ice breaker question for the face to face. Whenever I've interviewed people, I've tried to find out what they are really like. This is tricky in interviews as people are generally very nervous so I'd look for a question that helps relax the atmosphere. I'd often pull these from the candidates hobbies section.

Keep it short and snappy

Fit your CV onto 2 pages, no more. If it is too long, edit it down - do not just shrink the font size! Your CV should be clear and well formatted with obvious titles and sections.

Put yourself in the place of the interviewer and imagine having loads of CVs to read. What would you look for? Any simple spelling mistake is CV suicide. Same with obvious grammatical errors. Whether you are confident or not in these areas, always use a spell checker, and try to get a friend or relative to proof read your CV.

Don't go crazy with colours and fonts, unless you're a trained designer going for a design job. For everybody else, it can go badly wrong.

And that's my advice. Work through your CV step-by-step and make each section as short, relevant and focused as you can.

 

How to write a CV that really SELLS you!

The only purpose of a CV and cover letter is to get you to the job interview. Use the following advice to create a great CV that really sells you to a potential employer.

Also create a cover letter that targets the key things the interviewer is looking for.

The CV - What's it for?

Any decent job could have many applicants. The only thing giving you the chance of an interview is your CV and cover letter. They have to be relevant to the job advertised, immediately interesting to the reader and proof that you can do the job.

Before you start writing the CV think about what skills you have:
Are you good at communicating, planning, working in a team, problem solving, leading, motivating others, numeracy, IT, caring for others?
Create a table with 2 columns. In the first put down all your skills/strengths. In the second give an example e.g. for communicating in the second column you could put 'In my current job I led a team which solved a difficult problem saving the company £1000'.

Now you have a list of your best skills.

The job advertisement

Look carefully at the job advertisement. In it will be good clues on what sort of person they are looking for. Highlight the statements like 'Applicants need to be numerate with good communication skills. They need to be able to work under pressure to tight deadlines'.

Now build these skills into your cover letter and CV to demonstrate you meet the requirements for the job. Give examples to demonstrate how numerate you are, why you are a good communicator etc. Remember if someone is going to pay you £20,000 per year they need to know you can earn their company at least £40,000 per year otherwise why should they give you their money! Put yourself into the mind of the advertiser. What are they looking for - how can you prove you are the best person for their job.

Make your CV interesting

Imagine the person reading your letter and CV. They may have 100 applicants from which they need to invite 5 max. for interview. If your application is boring, or doesn't immediately prove you meet their advertised requirements it will be binned

Apply the 1.5 second rule - When you read it can you capture the reader's interest in you in the top 1/3 of the first page?

IF the answer in no this is how you improve it:

At the top put your name, address, telephone number and email address. This enables the employer to contact you easily.

Immediately below this put a short section - My Personal Skills and Achievements
In this use the table you prepared in section 1. What skills do you have that match the ones they advertised for? For example I am highly numerate with excellent communication skills. My Teamworking skills are excellent and I deliver all my projects on time and within budget. I have worked effectively in the XXXX industry for 5 years and have significantly contributed to the improved profitability of my current employer.

In the next section put your Employment History
Put your latest job first. If there are gaps - you may have taken a year out travelling - cover this by putting a positive comment about the experience '2006-2007 travelled in the Far East to improve my knowledge of other cultures and languages'.

If you have changed jobs every year or so for the last 10 or 20 years, try to minimise the negative impression this will give by merging jobs together if very similar.

In every job put a summary of your greatest achievement. Try to put numbers to your claims: 'I reduced costs in my department by 5% in 2 years'.
Every company only has three business variables - Cost, Price, Units Sold. Try to impress the reader by showing how you have positively affected at least one of these in each of your previous jobs.

Next put a section on Education. This should show:
Your Degree, college obtained, subject and level
Your A levels, school obtained, subjects and levels
Your GCSE's, school obtained, subjects and levels

Also if you have been in employment any relevant training courses

A final section on Interests should describe your hobbies. Try to have an interesting hobby, something the interviewer will remember you by after the interview. Voluntary work at Oxfam or another charity organisation will leave a good impression. It is also a fascinating thing to do on a Saturday morning.

At the end put the names and addresses of two referees. Select them carefully. Will they give a very positive image of you?

The Cover Letter

The cover letter should be created to match the requirements from the job advert. Remember the table you made of the skills needed in the advert. Now you put them into the letter with a great example for each showing how you fulfill this requirement. For example: If they want someone with at least 5 years in their industry outline that you have extensive knowledge of this area from your X years working in it and mention a couple of your quantifiable (measurable) achievements. 'I successfully implemented a 3% price increase and also increased the number of customers by 8% in 2007'.

Also include this in your CV and make sure the letter and CV are consistent.

Address your letter and CV to the right person - do your research first!

Show interest in the job and company

Ring the company before sending off your letter and CV. Ask to be put through to the person advertising the job. Have several relevant questions to ask them about the advert. For example 'The advert asked for 5 years of IT experience. I only have 3 but am certain I meet all your other criteria very well. Will this be acceptable?

By ringing you have immediately established a rapport with the advertiser. When they see your CV it will be given more consideration.

Use the internet to research the company and the job. Is it what you want? Print off the company web pages and bring them to your interview to show you do your research. Probably the people interviewing you will not have looked at their web site and will be impressed!

Remember finding a job is a job in itself. You need to apply for a lot. If you are never invited for interview there is something wrong with your letter and CV. Ask friends and colleagues to look at it and offer improvements. If a friend has a great CV ask to see it and use their writing skills to help you.

Stay positive and keep looking. Most jobs never get advertised. They are filled by word of mouth, so ring companies and ask if they have any jobs that suit your skills. Ask your friends and colleagues to let you know if they see anything coming up.

Good luck and stay POSITIVE.
Eventually you will find that great job - just keep working at it.

Writing a compelling personal profile

Most people are aware that to get ahead in life, particularly in terms of career advancement, there is a need to write a compelling personal profile that can be used to promote oneself when the opportunity arises. However, all too often this objective is not achieved and there are a number of reasons for this failure

The purpose of a profile

Perhaps the most important problem many people have with writing a compelling profile can be defined as errors in the initial approach to the profile. Most people will sit down with a blank sheet of paper in front of them and ask the question - "what can I tell the reader about me?" In fact the correct approach is to reverse this question. What you really need to be asking yourself at this stage is "What does the reader want to know about me?"

To react positively to this question what you need to be looking at is the reason for writing the profile in the first place. For example, is it for a new position of employment, to assist in seeking promotion in your current place of work or for some other purpose? The approach that you take to the two former options, being career related will, by definition, be different to the third.

The content

For a work related profile, whilst the prospective employer might want to receive some idea of your personal interests and educational career, particular in terms of exams and qualifications, these should not overpower the profile. By this what is meant is that the profile does not need to contain a long documentary of what hobbies and interests you may have. It is important to keep this section, which should always be the last section on the profile, short, succinct and to the point. However, if any of these points are salient to the position that you are applying for they should be highlighted. For example, if you have an interest in caring for animals or children and are applying for a role in the veterinary or childcare professions it is essential to mention your interests in this regard, albeit briefly.

Concerning the work experience aspect of the profile it is important to include accurate details of your work history. This should include a description of your role and what skills it required or had been learnt; details of your responsibilities, including those that entailed leading or managing other staff members and contact details of your past employer for reference purposes. If this is an application for your first position of employment then include within this section details of any work experience you might have undertaken that will stand you in good stead for the role being offered.

Other factors

In addition to the above aspect of writing a compelling profile there are a number of other factors that need to be considered. Firstly, particularly for a job application, it is essential that the profile is brief and to succinct. The last thing you want is for a busy human resource manager, who might have dozens of applicants for the advertised position, to say is "I have not got time to read all this" and cast your application aside because the profile element of it is too time consuming. Similarly, first impressions count. Therefore, it is important to ensure that your personal profile is presented in a manner that is professional, pleasing to the eye, easy to read and free from grammatical and spelling errors. Secondly, it is essential to present a positive image of yourself, so make sure your successes are the focus of the profile. Thirdly, be truthful. Lies will be found out! Also important is not to scrimp on cost by trying to squeeze your profile into an undersized envelope. It is better to bear the extra cost of an A4 or letter sized envelope so that when the profile is removed it is still in pristine condition.

And finally

Finally, before presenting a sample of how the sections of a compelling profile should be presented, it is important to mention that, even if your profile is not intended for employment purpose, for example it might be an application for membership of a specialist club; most of the above advice is still relevant. The only difference is that this will concentrate more upon your personal achievements and interests, with work skills only being relevant if they relate to the association where membership is being applied for or a specific position within that association.

Sample layout for a compelling profile

First section - Personal and contact details, with house and mobile phonr number and photograph if possible

Second section - Work history - last position first, highlighting your main duties and responsibilities

Third section - Work skills and qualifications
Fourth section - Personal interests and achievements

Tips in Posting Your Resume in the Internet

Although some sites provide a way to block certain organizations from viewing your resume, these systems are not foolproof.There is no fail-safe way to protect the confidentiality of your employment record after you store it online. You can do things to protect yourself.

Posting on commercial websites.

Most commercial recruitment Web sites provide detailed instructions for submitting a resume. In most cases, the instructions are very similar to the procedures for responding to a job posting. The instructions on the Web site may direct you to cut and paste your resume into an online application form or to send your resume to a designated e-mail address.

After you complete the steps for posting a resume at the commercial Web site, wait 48 hours and then search the database to see if you can find your resume. If you locate your resume, review it carefully to see if any errors occurred in transmission or processing. If you need to make corrections, follow the procedures that most sites provide for doing so.

If you cannot locate your resume, contact the site using the e-mail address provided for assistance and questions. In your message, provide your name as it appears on your resume, the date it was sent to the site, and the name of your e-mail service provider. In most cases, Web site managers quickly resolve such situations.

Protecting your privacy.

Sending your resume over the Internet to an employer’s designated e-mail address is a personal and private communication. The employer is not likely to share that with anyone outside the organization. Storing your resume in an online resume database, on the other hand, puts that document and the information it contains into the public domain. Your resume is open and available to anyone with access to the database, and in the case of most commercial employment sites that is any individual or organization paying the access fee — including your current employer.

Although some sites provide a way to block certain organizations from viewing your resume, these systems are not foolproof. After your resume resides in such a database, there is a high probability that other sites may copy it and reproduce in their databases. As a result, there is no fail-safe way to protect the confidentiality of your employment record after you store it online. It is also difficult to prevent an outdated version of your resume from circulating on the Internet forever.

You can do two things to protect yourself: Always date your Internet resume so that employers can quickly determine if they are reviewing a current or older version of your employment information. Remove your home address and telephone number from your resume and replace it with an e-mailbox that you use only for employment matters. Check this box frequently, so that you can respond quickly to employer inquiries. An Internet resume is, without question, an unusual looking document. Despite its appearance, it is a useful document that can help you take advantage of the Internet’s resources for finding a new or better job and managing your career.

How to improve a simple CV

Having worked through a series of cycles of recruitment within the retail sector, there are some key things to look out for when writing a CV. If you follow these simple tips it may help your chances of being noticed.

Keep it simple.

The number one rule, one that is sometimes forgotten, is to keep your CV simple. There is nothing worse when reading through hundreds of CV's to find one that is not easy on the eyes. Here is a list of ultimate no no's.

- Always use white paper.
- Use a professional font.
-Check formatting - make sure you use the same font and size throughout.
- Spelling and Grammar! Always check, there is no excuse when you have spellchecker!
- Do not add pictures, in the majority of cases it is unnecessary.
- Shy away from long paragraphs, keep it punchy.
- Be Honest, it takes only takes a second in an interview to eek out any untruths.

To Begin

When writing a CV, always look online first and see what the industry standard is for your sector. In most cases they are simple and only need basic information, it all depends on the job you are applying for. If it is a simple retail job then all you will need is two pages at the most.

Think of a good opening line in your personal statement at the top! Something individual will grab the readers attention far better than the standard:

"I work well in a team and competently on my own"

While this may be true, it certainly will not stand out. This is the most over-used phrase that I have found in CV's. Make it personal, the potential employer is looking for personality as well as competency.

Content

The content that you put throughout the CV is imperative to give the interviewer an overview of the person you are. There is a very good chance that the interviewer will have read over your CV before the interview. Here is an example of a simple layout that will give your CV a simple but effective flow.

- Personal Information (name, address, contact details)
- Personal Statement. (A short punchy paragraph)
- Educational Information. (GCSE, BTEC, A Levels, Degree)
- Work Experience. (Your most recent first)
- Competencies. (If you have any other training i.e. first aid/specific training)
- Personal Interests. (This will give the interviewer an insight into your life outside of work)
- References.

This should all fit neatly into two pages. If you make it much longer then it will be more of a chore for the interviewer to read.

First impressions

I'm not saying that by following these rules that you are guaranteed to get the first job you apply for, your CV is merely a snapshot of who you are. It does however help if you have a clean, concise, interesting CV that will jump out at the employer.

Always reflect what you have put in your CV. If you say that you are confident, be confident (but not cocky) Your CV acts as your first impression in most cases, if you have written a bad CV it does not give a good first impression.

When you have written your CV, always read it back. You will be surprised how many mistakes can occur without the spellcheck picking up on, that is to say, do not trust spell checker implicitly.

Lastly, try not to stress. A CV is a starting point, you can always elaborate on the information that you have put in your CV.