Your CV gives potential employers and recruiters an insight into you, your skills, and your experience. It’s your opportunity to talk about your achievements and how you’d be a great fit for the role and their business.
Hiring managers will be sent move CVs for their role than they need, so it is important that your CV makes an impact. Spending time on your CV will make a difference, ensuring that you have checked your spelling and grammar, and that it is consistent all the way through. There’s nothing worse than reading a CV that says ‘great attention to detail’ but finding a missing full stop!
Your contact details need to be on your CV. You should include your name, phone number, and email address. Your email address should be professional, ideally name.surname@email.com.
Do not include:
Your introduction is a paragraph that talks about who you are. It is an opportunity to outline any skills that you think would be relevant to the job that don’t quite fit in the other sections of your CV.
Your introduction should make you sound like you’re the perfect person for the job.
In this section include details of any paid jobs, volunteering, or placements that you have completed, starting with your most recent experience first.
Include:
If you’re applying for your first job concentrate on skills you have learnt during projects, work experience, or if you do any volunteering.
If you have hobbies or interests that can showcase the necessary skills you can add them here too. For example are you on a sports team and can talk about teamwork and communication skills.
You can add this after the introduction if this is your first role and you don’t have any work experience.
Starting with your most recent qualification, include:
Hobbies, passions, and interests can be a great way to stand out from the crowd and an excellent icebreaker in an interview. It’s unlikely that they will be the reason you’re offered a position, work experience and qualifications will usually be the deciding factor when an employer makes a job offer, but they do give a company an overview of your personality and if you’re a good fit for their business.
Don’t add the contact details for your references but advise that they are available on request. This both looks neater and doesn’t take up valuable space.
Your CV is not a huge list of everything you’ve ever done, keep it concise, around two pages in length. It should be in reverse chronological order, with your most recent job or education at the top and references at the bottom.
Your CV should be tailored for each role you’re applying for, highlighting the skills and experience that the job description outlines. Use the same language and vocabulary that the job description uses; this allows the hiring manager to quickly see that you have what they’re looking for. Alongside any role specific skills, make sure you mention transferable skills too, things like initiative, positive attitude, and teamwork are important skills to highlight as it helps the hiring manager understand what kind of person you are.
Read, reread, and reread it again. Read it forwards and backwards, checking for spelling, Americanisation, and grammar. It can also be helpful to ask a family member or friend to read it for you. Hiring managers have been known to stop reading CVs if there are spelling or grammatical mistakes.
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