Guidelines to Creating Your CV
Following these guidelines will help you create an impressive CV:
- Keep it concise. A good CV will be as short as possible, certainly no longer than two pages. CVs often fail because of sheer overload. It is important to keep enough back to elaborate on at the interview.
- Your CV should be attractive and easy to read: good spacing, margins and clear text. Avoid overcrowding.
- Focus on your achievements, skills and results.
- Keep sentences short and punchy.
- Do not use personal pronouns (I/we).
- Use action words to describe each achievement.
- Whenever possible, show results in numbers.
- Never include statements or achievements that cannot be proven.
- Do not use abbreviations when there could be doubt as to meaning. Be clear and precise.
- Be original, and avoid exaggerations and flowery terms - the world has seen enough of the expression 'results-oriented executive'! Don't use unnecessarily long words or phrases that you struggle to explain when questioned about. Whilst demonstrating a good vocabulary is important, try to use language you would normally use and feel comfortable with, but do of course try to impress by articulating well.
- There is no reason to weigh down a CV with lots of trivial details. There should be only enough information to trigger the reader's interest. Too much will load it down and will end up doing more harm than good.
- When writing about employment dates, you only need to show the year you started or terminated a position. If you were promoted during the period of employment, those dates can be shown in brackets next to each job title.
- The employer will ask, 'Does this person have the skills I am looking for?' If your CV does not demonstrate a certain level of competence in the employer's area of interest, there will be no invitation to interview.
- Test your CV before launching it on the market. Ask your friends, former manager, business associates and others to give you their impressions.
- Is your CV interesting? Is your message getting through? A boring C.V. is full of clichés, irrelevancies and general statements that really tell the reader very little.
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