When developing your career one of the most important things is building up a solid curriculum. You have to think that the first thing that recruiters or employers see of you is your CV and it determines whether they want to know more about you or not.
In this article I am going to talk about recommendations and guidelines on how to build a winning CV.
Disclaimer
Now be aware that some of the recommendations given today may not be completely relevant for some sectors like acting, academics, and other but I would say it is relevant for 80% of the jobs out there.
Length
Now this is an example of recommendation that may not be relevant for certain sectors: the length of your CV.
When writing a curriculum everyone’s first instinct is to fill it up with loads of details and try to demonstrate that our wisdom has no boundaries and end up having 10 pages.
Now this is wrong, girl!
An ideal CV will have only two pages.
Content
The order in which you organise the content in your CV is not extremely important, but you will always find more or less the same key details.
Name and contact details
Whilst it is possible that they can get your contact details elsewhere it is always helpful to leave them there as a reference. And it’s silly but putting your name in helps them keep track of printed copies. You are not the only one they are looking at, honey!
Do you need to put your address? No. Do you need to put your date of birth? Nope. Phone number and email will be enough. And it is illegal for them to ask for your date of birth.
The same goes for your National Insurance Number or equivalent in your country. The only time when that information is required is whenever they made you an offer and want to send you a contract.
Personal profile
It is not mandatory but it is recommended to put a couple of small paragraphs describing yourself, your career and the prospect you are looking for.
Career History
Now this is the juicy part. This is where you want them to be hooked.
Regardless of the chronological order you will want to include the companies you worked for and for what period, the role you had, your key responsibilities and your key achievements.
If you have had a long career already, don’t put everything in, just concentrate on the most relevant positions, which normally are the latest ones.
And please, please, please, use bullet points to describe your responsibilities and key achievements. Don’t just throw up words on it.
Education and training
Any qualification, course, or title has to be listed here. Now, we know you have attended thousands of seminar courses, but believe me, no one cares. Put the most relevant ones to the career you are pursuing.
Also, Include languages if you speak more than one and if you think it is beneficial.
Purpose
This may sound silly but many people do not understand the purpose of their own CV.
The first thing you have to ask yourself is: What do I want to achieve?
Do you want to be a lawyer? If so, what type of lawyer? Do you want to climb up the ladder or do you want to have a comfortable job?
Unless you have asked yourself all these questions you won’t be able to orientate your CV in the proper direction.
Your CV has to be used as a tool for employers to see you are the person they are looking for. But not only that, with your CV you are actually setting the agenda for potential interviews. On any interview they will ask you to either drive them through your CV or they will directly ask you questions about it.
Use your CV to highlight the things you want to talk about. Do you have any achievement that will trigger an amazing success story you can tell? Put it on your CV, put it in bold, underline it, put it in glitter or neon lights. Alright, that may be too much… Just do whatever is necessary to draw the attention of the employers.
Farewell
Ok guys, this is it for now. Now I am sure you may have loads of questions and comments so please leave them down below and I will try to answer you the best I can.
Have a lovely day and until the next article!