It is so important that your CV looks professional and readable because this is your very own advert to sell yourself. This could determine whether or not you secure an interview.
Your CV reflects how professional you are and demonstrates your presentation skills, attention to detail and your ability to organise. We see so many CVs at AMR and we can easily identify the top quality candidates through a well laid out and informative CV.
Some key top tips:
• Make it readable
• Keep it simple, short and punchy
• Try and keep it to 2/3 pages max
• Use a simple font, Arial or Calibri
• No smaller than 11 points
• Use boldface to highlight titles
• Use sufficient spaces to define the different sections
• Use bullet points for uncluttered brief lists
• Use a logical order
• Be concise and summarise
• Keep each section laid out the same
• Put your latest job at the top of your work experience and work down
• Highlight key achievements
• Employers like to see the impact you’ve made
• Use examples to demonstrate your key selling points
• Research the internet for ideas on buzz words, job descriptions and adverts
• Tailor your CV to the job – one size does not fit all
Some key things NOT to do on your CV:
• Bad spelling and grammar
• An untidy layout
• Too long and unclear to read
• Leave periods of time unaccounted for
• Write in third person
• Write long statements with loads of skills all mixed up
• Use different sizes and fonts
• Start with the first job you ever did at the top of your work experience
• Don’t simply write a skill without supporting it with hard evidence
We recommend the following layout and we can even send you a template if this helps:
Personal Details:
Name, address, contact details
Professional Summary:
Summarise yourself, key skills, experience and motivations in just a few sentences. This is a bite size chunk of your CV so pull out what you do well.
Core Skills and Key Career Highlights:
Summarise your key skills and career highlights to pull out what you do best. Sometimes a recruiter will be skim reading through a huge pile of CVs so this could be your chance to prioritise your key skills and achievements.
Work Experience:
Include jobs from your most recent first. Don’t just list the roles you did or the skills needed, but use this section to demonstrate what you did and back this up with a strong example. For example, rather than just stating “strong marketing skills”, it is better to use a specific achievement to demonstrate this, such as “created a stylish marketing campaign to sell our new brand of perfume and increased sales by 15%”. Employers want to see what impact you can make on their business.
And finally, don’t leave any periods of time out and if you have a long work history then you can always summarise a period of time at the beginning of your career.
Education, Training and CPD and Hobbies and Interest:
State your education including dates and include any relevant training and CPD. Your hobbies and interest also gives you an opportunity to tell the reader more about you as a person.
References:
Chose 2 recent and appropriate referees and make sure they are happy to do this for you.
Once your CV is ready to go then register with us and sent it over. We can even help you format and tweak it.
And who knows, we might just be speaking to your perfect employer!