CV Tips
Pronunciation key ~ curriculum vi-tae ~ noun ~ plural = curricula vitae ~ Abbreviation = CV ~ A summary of one's education, professional history, and job qualifications, as for a prospective employer.
1. Keep your curriculum vitae simple. Your curriculum vitae must be concise. Your curriculum vitae must be easy to read. Your curriculum vitae must sell you. And your curriculum vitae must be tailored to what the reader is looking for.
2. These CV and letter principles apply to all career moves. Having a good CV is essential for full-time jobs, part-time, internal, external, promotions, new jobs, career changes, internships and work experience placements - wherever an employer or decision-maker is short-listing or interviewing or selecting applicants.
3. Short-listed and successful candidates are invariably the people who provide employers with the best CVs and best covering letters.
4. How you perform at the interview or group selection is of course crucial, but only the people with the best CVs and letters get to that stage.
5. CV writing is a form of marketing or advertising, when the product is you.
6. Your CV must sell you to a prospective employer, and compete against other applicants who are also trying to sell themselves. So the challenge in CV writing is to be more appealing and attractive than the rest.
7. This means that your curriculum vitae must be presented professionally, clearly, and in a way that indicates you are an ideal candidate for the job, i.e., you possess the right skills, experience, behaviour, attitude, morality that the employer is seeking. The way you present your CV effectively demonstrates your ability to communicate, and particularly to explain a professional business proposition.
8. Put yourself in the shoes of the employer: write down a description of the person they are looking for. You can now use this as a blue-print for your CV. The better the match the more likely you are to be called for an interview.
9. If you find it difficult to match your own CV description to the requirements of the role, then perhaps the role is not for you. There is little or no point distorting or falsifying yourself in order to get a job. If you falsify yourself in your CV you will be unlikely to provide the necessary proof of your claims at interview, and even if you manage to do this and to get the job, then you will not be able to do the job enjoyably without stress.
10. Obviously lying in a CV is a risky strategy, especially about qualifications, and you should avoid any such temptation. Better to be proud and confident of who you are. Integrity and reputation are more important than qualifications. A CV with a lie is an embarrassment, or even a dismissal, waiting to happen, sometimes years later when you have a lot more to lose.
11. Blow your own trumpet, emphasise your characteristics, your capabilities and achievements - this is all fine - but know where to draw the line. Positive emphasis and strong presentation is good; falsehoods are not.
12. In your CV it is important to emphasise your attributes in strong, relevant and expressive terms; modesty does not work particularly well on any CV.
13. Additionally, there is a widely held school of thought that writing such statements - powerful descriptions about yourself, your personality and your strengths and capabilities - actually helps you to become even more like the person you describe. It is related to NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), self-talk, self-belief, and positive visualisation: we tend to live up to our claims when we write them down and commit to them. Creating a positive CV for ourselves helps us to grow and to become how we want to be.
We have detailed below a CV uploader to provide ourselves and recruiters with your CV already formatted. We hope the above tips were helpful and act as some sound guidance in your approach to creation of your CV.
As consultants we do of course deal with CVs on a daily basis and therefore if you require any further advice please do not hesitate to give our head office a call on 01277 366800 or email us at info@completesecurityrecruitment.com
