CV Writing

Sim­ply put, a poten­tial employer will form their first impres­sion of you from your CV and it is vital to get it right first time. It can be the dif­fer­ence between get­ting through the door for an inter­view or not. Those with sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence often find it dif­fi­cult to keep their CV suc­cinct. We rec­om­mend you adjust your CV for each job you apply for to reflect the exact expe­ri­ence you have for that par­tic­u­lar oppor­tu­nity and to keep it easy for the employer to see why you fit the require­ments for the role.

The basics:
Use a clear font, such as Arial, and make sure the print is not too small or too large. Make sure the spac­ing is even and con­sis­tent and don’t use huge blocks of text with­out bul­lets. Make it easy for employ­ers to see what’s rel­e­vant – they usu­ally have sev­eral CVs to read and are short of time so if they have to plough through pages of words they might not per­se­vere. How­ever good your spelling use a spell-checker just to be sure. Keep your CV to 3 pages max­i­mum if possible.

You should include:

• Per­sonal details; name, address, tele­phone num­bers, email address
• Sum­mary pro­file; nor­mally a para­graph out­lin­ing your strengths and a sum­mary of your experience
• Edu­ca­tion; detail of degree, A lev­els and other rel­e­vant qual­i­fi­ca­tions out­lin­ing place of study and grades
• Career His­tory; in reverse chrono­log­i­cal order, with most detail on your most recent roles and less on ear­lier positions
• Finally, write a good cover let­ter to go with your CV. This can often be the extra con­fir­ma­tion an employer needs to offer you an interview