Make Your CV Work For You

Getting your CV right is of utmost importance, especially in the market we are in at the moment. Read these CV tips and better your chances!

The best advise for drawing up your CV is to do it in rough hand first, jotting down everything you have studied and worked at since entering college, this way you can see what is essentially a map of your professional life to date. Once you have done this, you will automatically see what doesn’t have a place in your professional profile. For example, if you studied Nursing and went into the nursing profession once qualified, then your part time summer position in between year 1 and year 2 as a lawn mower in the local community school is not as important as it was back when you were 19!

Be clear and concise with your headings, picking the obvious Education, Working Experience and a Skills Profile. From your rough draft, pick the most important information like the title of your degree, and include your Thesis title from your final year. In Working Experience, clearly give your Job Title and list your daily duties, and then streamline it once again to the most important and relevant daily duties. In your Skills Profile list specific skills learned at college and once again through any work experience.

And finally! Personal Profile. This takes a little bit of extra thinking! This is where you sell yourself.  Although I am mentioning it last it should be at the top of the CV.  The Personal Profile/ Synopsis is the core of you and your career to date in a short paragraph at the beginning of your CV. From your rough draft, put together a paragraph about yourself incorporating your work to date, essentially telling any prospective employer about yourself in your career.  Make it relevant to each individual position you apply for.  Generic profiles do not work as well as a targeted synopsis.  What are the company looking for.  Address how you can fill these requirements.  This should be enough to make them read on!

You can see more CV tips here.