A CV or Curriculum Vitae is a précis of your employment record, your status and your achievements and it has become the form of initial communication between jobseekers and employers. Because of its importance, it merits every second you can afford to spend on it, polishing, tweaking and otherwise fine-tuning it. The cleverest of light touches or the smallest of errors can make the difference between being in or out of work.
Because there is no obvious right answer, there are a whole host of schools of thought as to how a CV should be structured or, even, what exactly it should contain. While getting it right might be the subject of a PhD thesis, getting it wrong is a simple matter. Just fail to include any of the following, for example:
- Your name and title (genders are not always obvious)
- Address
- Phone number
- Email account – if you have one, but only include it if you are going to check the account religiously
- Qualifications – it is rarely worth elaborating on GCSE’s but do go into detail about anything at A-level and above
- Employment history – work in reverse chronological order and go into more detail about your last posts (the jobs you were in 10 years ago are of relatively little importance so play them down)
- Other skills – e.g. driving licence, HGV licence, shorthand, how many words per minute you can type, software familiarity, foreign languages etc
This is the absolute minimum and it will look it, too. Ideally, your CV should state the following unless you have good reasons not to:
- Date of birth (DOB as it can be called) – an employer is rarely entitled to ask this as it might suggest that an illegal ageist policy operates. That doesn’t mean that they don’t want to know, though!
- Hobbies and interests – the way in which you spend your spare time is entirely your own business and an employer has limited rights to ask about it or influence it. Again, it doesn’t mean they wouldn’t like to know and, anyway, it makes a good topic for the interview.
- Two referees – you may want to consider holding back on this as you don’t want your contacts being bothered by companies who are going through the motions rather than actively considering you for a job. Why not write ‘supplied on request’ as this shows you have referees to hand but are being respectful of their privacy?
- Achievements – is there anything you have done which you can claim to be special? For example, run a marathon for charity, made a million for your last company and so on.
- Your profile – this is a statement saying who you are and what you want from life. Include a fact or two about yourself but ‘short and snappy’ wins every time.
Now it comes to presentation. Having a winning CV is no good if you don’t present it properly. Your CV needs to be:
- Laser-printed (or produced by a top quality inkjet)
- Properly tabulated and set out with consistency in headings and indents
- Edited so that it doesn’t run to more than 3 pages (2 is much better)
- Printed on a light-coloured paper (white, vellum, egg-shell) which will photocopy well.
Some CV tips
CV’s get torn apart and separated in order to be passed around various managers and staff for their comments. These people are always under pressure and frequently make mistakes – that might even be the reason why the job exists. It is all too easy for them to forget which pages go with which applicant so make sure that you put your name (and, ideally, phone number and email) on each page.
Keep your CV by you at all times when you are jobseeking. If you are on the phone to someone, you can get put on the spot and answer incorrectly from memory only to later contradict yourself. Far more professional is to have all the information to hand and be 100% confident that you will say the same thing tomorrow as you said today!
Arrive 10 minutes early for your interview and use this time to glance through your CV to refresh the various dates in your mind (you’re going to be a bit like an expert witness in a court case).
When attending interviews, always carry a couple of spare copies. That way, if the interviewer forgets their copy, you can smile sweetly and hand over one that you ‘just happened to have with you’ thus demonstrating your efficiency and professionalism as you help out a (future) colleague.
As we said at the outset, you never stop fine-tuning your CV. But, before you go live with it, why not ask a friend to play the part of a boss who has just had it arrive on his or her desk? You’ll be surprised by what they find wrong with it.
Keep your CV regularly updated – even if you are in a long-term job. Having your career history accurately tabulated can be useful for other things besides finding you work. You never know!
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