Making your CV work for you
The primary purpose of a CV is to secure you an interview for your chosen job. In that respect the CV should be a 'sales' document and not just a catalogue of events throughout your career. Potential employers will be making judgements as to your suitability as an employee based on your CV, so the harder it works for you the more likely it is that you will be called for an interview.
Top Ten Tips
1. Keep it Simple
The more difficult your CV is to read, the less likely it is to be read! Potential employers may have dozens of CVs to consider so don't eliminate yourself at the outset by over-complicating the CV. Avoid gimmicky fonts, graphics, colours and boxes and let them concentrate on the content.
2. Keep it Brief
Another sure way to ensure your CV is not read is to make overly long. Potential employers spend relatively little time reading a CV, at least in the early stages of recruitment, so your CV needs to convey the important information in a concise manner. It is generally accepted that anything over two pages is too long!
3. Be Specific
The employer is interested in knowing whether you are able to do the job. Consider the job specification in detail and decide what are the important factors that the employer will be judging against. Prepare your CV in a way that highlights your suitability. It is better to send a different CV for every position than a general one for them all.
4. Follow a Logical Structure
Your most recent experience is likely to of the most interest to the employer, therefore it follows that your most recent experience should take precedence. Work in reverse chronological order, devoting most space to the most recent employment and less to the earlier ones (unless this experience is crucial to the role you are applying for).
5. Highlight Your Achievements
Achievements detail the successes you have had in a particular role, which in turn may indicate potential to succeed in a new role. Employers are more likely to be interested in your achievements than in the detail of how you achieved. Those details can be saved for the interview.
6. Sell Your Skills
As with your achievements, highlight the skills you have employed in order to achieve your results. You need not go into specifics of how you applied them. Again, that can be covered at interview. A good CV should stimulate the employer's curiosity and start them thinking of questions to ask at interview.
7. Don't Over Elaborate
Retain a certain degree of mystery. Giving too much detail will often have a detrimental effect. At this stage, brief statements about your job scope and function, responsibilities, achievements and skills should suffice. Avoid being vague, but equally, avoid being verbose. It is possible to be concise and brief!
8. Make it Interesting
This, of course, is a subjective judgement. However, your CV should interest an employer sufficiently for them to ask you for interview. Keeping it focussed and relevant to the position on offer will help, as will tempting them with your skills and achievements. Eliminate unnecessary information. If it doesn't help the employer decide on whether or not you may be suitable it is unlikely to be of interest. Many personal details may fall into the category of superfluous information, such as; full postal address (rather than a location), marital status and family details, hobbies and pastimes etc. If it doesn't help you secure the interview, you don't need to include it!
9. Make it Universal
When sending a CV electronically it needs to be universally understood. A fancy font may look great on your machine, but if the recipient can't read it, it is likely to overlooked. Standard fonts (Times New Roman, Ariel and Helvetica) are most likely to be understood, however, Tahoma is the only universal font that can be understood by both PCs and MacIntosh machines. Furthermore, most employers would expect to receive a CV in Word format.
10. Check It
You will have a function on your PC that will allow you check spelling and grammar so use it. Having checked it, check it again. A spell check may decide that all of the words are spelt correctly, but this does not mean they all make sense. Finally, let someone else read it. They are far more likely to find mistakes than you are.
