Lifestyle
How to write a great CV.
Keep your CV simple, concise and easy to read. Your curriculum vitae must sell you to a prospective employer and be tailored to what the reader is looking for.
CV writing is like advertising except you are competing against other applicants who are also trying to sell themselves. So, the challenge in CV writing is to be more appealing and attractive than the rest. This means that your CV must be presented professionally, clearly, and in a way that indicates you are an ideal candidate for the job, i.e., you possess the right skills, experience, behaviour, attitude and morality that the employer is seeking. The way you present your CV effectively demonstrates your ability to communicate, and particularly to explain a professional business proposition.
Put yourself in the shoes of the employer: write down a description of the person they are looking for. You can now use this as a blue-print for your CV. The better the match the more likely you are to be called for an interview.
Presentation and order is important. When you are selling your skills and experience, you need to get the key information across quickly. The quicker the reader can read and absorb the main points, the more likely they are to invite you for interview. A well presented CV indicates you are professional, business-like and well organised. The structure suggested below sells your strengths first and provides personal and career history details last - most people do it the other way round which has less impact. You can immediately stand out from them and make a much better impression.
For all but very senior positions, you should aim to fit your CV on two sides of A4 paper. For large corporation director positions two or three sheets are acceptable, but a well-presented single side will always tend to impress and impact more than lots of detail spread over a number of pages. Always try to use as few words as possible. In CV writing, like advertising, "less is more". This means you need to think carefully about the words you use - make sure each one is working for you - if any aren't, remove them or replace them. Never use two words when one will do.
Curriculum vitae template
(Other than 'Title', use these sub-headings or similar)
Heading
This is simply your name, followed by the word 'CV' or 'Curriculum Vitae'
Personal Profile
Five to seven high impact statements that describe you. These are effectively your personal strengths. Be bold, confident and positive when you construct these key statements. Orientate the descriptions to the type of job you are seeking. If you have a serious qualification and it's relevant, include it as the final point. Look at the examples shown to see how these statements use powerful words and professional business vocabulary.
Experience
This is not your career history. It's a bullet point description of your experience. Make sure you orientate these simple statements to meet the requirements of the reader, in other words ensure the experience and strengths are relevant to the type of job/responsibility that you are seeking. Again try to use powerful statements and impressive language - be bold and check that the language and descriptions look confident and positive. If you are at the beginning or very early stage of your career you will not have much or any work experience to refer to, in which case you must refer to other aspects of your life experience - your college or university experience, your hobbies, social or sports achievements, and bring out the aspects that will be relevant to the way you would work. Prospective employers look for key indicators of initiative, creativity, originality, organisation, planning, cost-management, people-skills, technical skill, diligence and reliability, depending on the job; so find examples of the relevant required behaviors from your life, and encapsulate them in snappy, impressive statements. Go for active not passive descriptions, i.e. where you are making things happen, not having things happen to you.
Achievements
High impact descriptions of your major achievements. Separate, compact, impressive statements. Ensure you refer to facts, figures and timescales - prospective employers look for quantative information - hard facts, not vague claims. These achievements should back up your Personal Profile claims earlier - they are the evidence that you can do what you say. Again they must be relevant to the role you are seeking.
Career History
A tight compact neatly presented summary of your career history. Start with the most recent or present job and end with the last. Show starting and finishing years - not necessarily the months. Show company name, city address - not necessarily the full address. Show your job title(s). Use a generally recognised job title if the actual job title is misleading or unclear.
Personal Details
Use these sub-headings to provide details of full name, sex (if not obvious from your name), address, phone, email, date of birth, marital status, number of children and ages if applicable, driving licence (hopefully clean - if not state position), education (school, college, university and dates), qualifications. Keep all this information very tight, compact and concise. If you are at a more advanced stage of your career you can choose to reduce the amount of personal details shown as some will be implicit or not relevant. Date the CV, and save as a file with some indication of what type of job it was orientated for, as you may develop a number of different CV's.
