There is no right or wrong way to prepare or present your CV, and different ‘experts’ will offer advice that is often conflicting in this area. Yet we all know that, when faced with too many CV’s to choose from, employers will either be ‘drawn’ to your CV – in which case you are chosen for interview, or not. So getting CV preparation, content and presentation right is essential.
Here are some general guidelines that will help to ensure your CV creates a positive first impression and, at the very least, warrants a detailed read by employers:
Contents
Remember, it’s important to be concise – employers spend only a little time reading your CV, and they won’t go looking for details in large blocks of text, so use bullet points. If your CV becomes too long, try to ensure you spend more time and text detailing your more recent roles, and trim older roles first.
As a minimum, your CV should offer the reader the following information, and ideally in this order:
- Name, town of residence, contact details – email address, mobile number
- Nationality (and if not British, indicate what type of legal right you have to work in the UK)
- Availability – notice period
- Personal Profile, a short paragraph highlighting key skills
- Education, qualifications and memberships of professional bodies
- Employment history. Here, try to avoid repetition, drawing out key challenges and skills acquired in each role rather than simply listing tasks. Also, tell the reader who your previous employers are – e.g. XYZ is an Engineering Company based in Germany, France and the UK supplying gear boxes to manufacturers of SUV vehicles. It has 4,000 employees and revenues of c£480m
- IT Skills and any courses attended, indicating particular levels of proficiency
- Languages (indicating degree of fluency) or other skills
- Referees’ details, or an indication that they are available upon request
Things to Remember
- Where listing events – for example for Education and Employment History, do so in reverse chronology, i.e. most recent qualification or job first.
- A bullet point of more than 2 lines is a paragraph and may not be fully read
- Choose a clear font and stick with it. Changing fonts, or font sizes, makes the document less pleasing to the eye and will not present you in an optimal way.
- Confirm dates and qualifications are correct
- Check for spelling, punctuation and grammar
- You should ALWAYS ‘tweak’ your CV for relevance to a specific Job Description before sending it to an employer, remaining truthful but highlighting key areas for relevance.