Helpful tips about writing your CV

Your CV only makes up a small % of the overall hiring process, but it’s the first impression employers get of you so it’s has to showcase your skills in the best possible fashion.

Having a tight CV means you will have greater confidence in an interview scenario, and if laid out correctly will allow you to dictate the type of questions you are asked.

Most importantly the stronger your CV is, then the more likely you are to get a chance to interview in the first place.

A CV is a selling document; it sells your qualifications, skills and achievements to a potential 'employer', it will also give them a picture of what kind of employee you would be. So when writing your CV, step into the reader’s shoes; ask yourself “what do they want to read?”

Initially, in order for your document to receive more than just a glance, I would recommend the following steps;

• Have an Objective, instead of a summary, being honest with you most people skip over this first section and you end up repeating yourself in your work experience section anyway. Keep it to a maximum of two lines. Consider when you wrote a thesis in college; you never summarised it at the start you stated what you aim was when composing the document

• If you have multiple years of experience, then place your education and qualifications at the back of your CV

• Keep your personal information short. Skip your family details, marital status and current address as it takes up too much space.

• Focus on your proficiency and abilities. What skills have you acquired and keep them nice and specific to the job spec? Ask yourself, “What are my strengths?” Try to give the reader a good overview of your skill set.
• Give a very brief intro to each of your companies and roles before listing off responsibilities. Include company name, size, industry and who you reported to

• Make sure you show ownership of tasks; “I delivered, I designed, I was responsible and variations. Candidate have a tendency to list off responsibilities, but not indicating what their specific involvement was in each task
• Have maybe 5-6 bullet points covering your day to day activities, similar to what you might read on a spec

• Key Achievements – Have this section at the end of each role that you have had. This is where you showcase your skills and highlight initiatives that you had specific responsibility for. These will be unique to your CV –

• Make sure all key achievements are specific and measurable increased productivity by 20% or achieved 110% of 2014 revenue target

• The potential interview will be naturally drawn to this section, and if you achievements are laid out correctly you will spend the entire interview talking about how great you are, therefore dictating the flow of the meeting

• Showcase your personal interests and non-work related activities. What I have noticed with some employers is they favour people with hobbies and after work activities. It will also open a conversation in the interview in order to speak about something you are passionate about. Remember show similar passion when speaking about the job responsibilities

• Add personality and flavour. CVs are no longer black & white and restricted to two pages. Play with the design, showcase your projects in image and text.

• As Hiring Manager see 100’s of CV, it’s no harm to consider using company logos in colour on your CV, just to make it slightly more appealing on the eye

• Ensure that everything is listed in reverse chronological order with most recent position first

• If you have a deeply technical background , you should incorporate information on the product architecture in your work experience section

• Also highly beneficial to showcase your technical skills in a “Skills Matrix”; which is essentially a table of contents showing your most prominent technical skills and how many years’ experience you have with them

When considering a career change, insure the skill set you have is transferable and highlight those skills. We do get countless people who apply for positions that are completely irrelevant. I touched upon why people don’t respond to CVs in my last blog, so I won’t go into that. When you consider skills look at them like this;

Job related – Exact fit for what’s required

Transferable – Skills that you possess from one job that would work in another

Adaptive – Skills that you have that are similar but with some extra training or work you could fulfil the requirement. Database Development or Project Management would be good areas where skills can be adapted.

Irrelevant – Where certain skills are simply different.

So when writing your CV, the skills you possess are vital for the CV. Most CV’s go through some sort of key word search before the CV is fully read. It’s important to read the job specs in detail and find those key words, for example if you are looking for a Database Administrator role, look for the Database the company uses, is it Oracle, SQL, DB2, MS Access, what scripts are they using all key words and insure they are very evident on your CV.

With regards the content and the actual writing on the CV, it’s important to keep the content specific and to the point. Try not waffle or stretch out any points/duties. Keep it concise and fact full. I have never been a good speller but check this over. If English is not your native language do NOT write in your native language and use a translator app like Google Translate, the grammar and wording are generally all over the place and makes it quite obvious you have used a translator. Ask people to read over the CV and to critique your CV.

Writing a CV is time consuming and a difficult task. By putting in the time getting creative and informative there is a greater chance of being noticed. I will continue my blogs and would welcome suggestions of what people would like to read. I will follow this blog with Interview and Salary negotiation tips.