To add value to sth.

1.6. How to improve your CV?

a) Study the curriculum vitae template and say which of the recommendations you find difficult/impossible to follow and why.

A CV can be written in a professional and neat manner to make it easy for the recruiter to scan and read it.

Presentation and sequence of items with your CV are very important. You need to get to the key points quickly. The quicker the reader can read and absorb the key points the better. A well- presented and well-structured CV also indicates that you are professional, business-like and well organized. 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. Structuring a CV like this you can immediately stand out from the others and make a much better impression.

Curriculum vitae template

Heading

Simply your name followed by the word or 'CV' or 'Curriculum Vitae' ('Resume' is used more in the USA (See Resume section).

Personal Profile (and/or Attributes)(See Personal Profilesection)

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. (See the examples of CV words and phrases in Appendix I).

Experience (and/or Special Capabilities)

This is not your career history. It's a bullet points description of your experience and/or your capabilities. Make sure that the experience/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 integrity, enthusiasm, passion, determination, initiative, creativity, originality, organizational ability, planning, cost-management, people-skills, technical skill, diligence, 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. (See the examples of CV words and phrases in Appendix I).

Achievements

High impact descriptions of your major achievements. Separate, compact, impressive statements. Ensure you refer to facts, figures and timescales — prospective employers look for quantitative 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. (See the examples of CV words and phrases in Appendix I).

Career History

A tight compact neatly presented summary of your career history. Start with the most recent or present job and end with the first. 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 recognized job title if the actual job title is misleading or unclear.

If you have little work experience you can combine Career history into one section.

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), education (school, college, university and dates), qualifications, and emphasize clearly that references are available. 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. (The applicant has more freedom today to withhold certain personal information on a CV about age or date of birth, marital status, children or dependents. It's entirely a matter of personal opinion and judgment whether to include such information. There is no law which compels or prevents the inclusion or withholding within your CV of personal information that is subject to equality and discrimination legislation).

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 CVs. (Creating your own CV templates to use for different career moves can save you time in writing different CVs for different types of jobs. Changing CV words and phrases to suit different jobs is important. Writing and keeping file copies of your own different CV examples and CV templates can save you hours of work, and will help you to be able to produce an individually 'tailored' CV for each of the different opportunities as they arise).

Education and Qualifications

Depending on the person and the job vacancy and the employer's expectations it is sometimes better to show education and qualifications in a separate section, rather than within the Personal Details, as a way of giving them greater emphasis. If so then this section can be placed after or before the Personal Details, or given higher prominence if the situation warrants it.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 740