2. Experience

This is the foundation of any CV - where you carefully match your life experience against the requirements of the job you are applying for. If you have worked through the section on achievements , and collated all the information in our Getting Started article, then you'll have already done the majority of the work.

List your most recent experience first, and work backwards from there, reducing the amount of detail the further back you go. This means that the reader will focus on your more recent achievements, which can then be related to the job in question.

Make sure you use the action words that we looked at in the achievements section, and back up your statements with facts and figures. Rather than saying:

"Experienced in sales..."

A much more effective statement would be:

"Increased sales over two years by 18%, resulting in a £1.5 million profit increase".

If you had 10 jobs in sales during the early years of your career, don't list them all, as the details probably aren't all that relevant now, and it could give the false impression that you don't stick at anything. Group them together under a heading of "Prior Experience" and show that you were developing your career even in the early days. For example:

"Between 1984 and 1993 I built up considerable experience in sales, marketing and management with national and local firms in the scientific and technical industry."

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