Job Hunting Tips - Writing The Perfect CV - Part 1

A CV (from the Latin Curriculum Vitae) – ‘Resume’ for our American friends has only ONE purpose. It aims to win you an interview. Once you’re at the interview, the interviewer may use the CV as a basis for discussion, but it won’t determine whether or not you’ll get the job. With this in mind, what are the most important aspects of a CV?

1) Don’t make your CV too long

Two pages length is perfect. There are some exceptions – some employers from countries such as South Africa prefer as much information as possible, but on the whole, anything more than three pages may have a negative impact on your interview chances.

Think of yourself as being the one having to discriminate between over 100 different CV’s for the one job role. Would you really be interested to read everything about somebody’s previous employment or simply have them summarise 5 bullet points of the job that indicate the experience most pertinent to the applied position?

Often, someone will make a decision on whether or not to see someone for interview after viewing a CV for less than thirty seconds. If your most relevant industry experience is hidden away on the 4th page of your CV, you’re hampering your chances of getting invited to that all-important interview.

2) Make sure your CV is in the right order

On most occasions your employment history is more important than your educational qualifications. This means that on most occasions your employment history should be before your educational qualifications on your CV.

Often people make the mistake of emphasising what they’re proud of rather than emphasising what’s more likely to be the most important thing to your prospective employer. Try your best to view things from a neutral perspective and highlight your skill set that relates to the job description of the position you’re applying for.

3) Personalise your CV for every job application

If you have your CV saved on you computer, it doesn’t take too long to optimise its relevancy for your potential future employer. Once you’ve viewed the company’s website and read the job advert you’ll be able to determine whether or not there are aspects of your previous experience that don’t presently feature on your CV.

Simply delete the bullet points in your previous work experience that are less pertinent to this job application and replace them with bullet points that are more pertinent. Remember to use similar phraseology and wording that appear in the company’s literature in order to highlight your specific relevance to the position.

Job Hunting Tips - Writing The Perfect CV - Part 2

The first part of this article focused on not making your CV too long, making sure your CV is in the right order and why you should personalise your CV for every job application. The second part will focus on the content for your CV including Personal Details, Personal Profile, Employment Experience, Educational Qualifications, Additional Training and Personal Interests.

1) Personal Details

Your CV should start off with your name in big lettering, at the top centre of the page. There is no need to also include ‘CV’ or ‘Curriculum Vitae’ as it is obvious what the document is intended for.

Your personal contact details should be next, but not take up too much room. If necessary, use a smaller font and position them towards the top corner of the page.

2) Personal Profile

Your Personal Profile should be no longer than five lines long, be written in the third person, and give an accurate overview of your employment and educational experience as well as appearing objective while subtly selling your relative attributes for a particular position.

3) Employment Experience

As discussed in the first part of this article, your employment experience should generally be featured before your educational background. Examples of when this is not the case includes recent graduates in a relevant degree as well as positions where a specific degree or qualification is essential.

When listing each place of employment, the employer name, month of employment starting and finishing and a one or two line overview of the employer should be included. Following that, the job title of the position should be highlighted above 5 bullet points describing the role.

Specific aspects of the role should be highlighted in the bullet points that are pertinent to a specific new position. Each bullet point should be no longer than 2 lines in length.

4) Educational Qualifications

Start with the most recent qualification. List the month and year that the qualification started and finished, the establishment where the qualification was undertaken, the location of the place of study and the qualification gained. There is no need to list additional information such as the modules studied within a programme unless specifically asked to do so.

High school qualifications should only be listed if you finished school within the past five years or a qualification is extremely relevant for a job role. (Such as typing speed when applying for a secretarial position.)

5) Additional Training

Any additional training qualifications should only be listed if they are pertinent to the position applied for. If you don’t have any additional qualifications then don’t bother with the ‘Additional Training’ heading.

6) Personal Interests

The final section at the bottom of the second page of your CV should cover your personal interests. In this section you have to tread the thin line between demonstrating that your personal interests influence you positively by giving you a varied perspective on life and seeming too unusual to fit in with the existing personnel.

In addition, be careful not to include information that is too personal in this section. Although you may be proud of your spouse and children, by including their names you may diminish the perception of you as a professional candidate.

There is no need to include the commonly featured ‘references’ section at the bottom of a CV. It is assumed that relevant references will be made available should an offer of employment be made. In addition, assuming that you have some good referees, you should consider this information to be private as there is no need to take the chance of a prospective employer contacting your referees without the intention of making an offer of employment (which can be made subject to references anyway).

David Bain is a consultant to Uteach Recruitment who specialise in UK Teaching Jobs. Whether you are a school struggling to find a new teacher to fill a position or a teacher looking for a teaching job role in the UK, visit their website http://www.UteachRecruitment.com today.

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